A Revised Malazan Reading Order

Way back in the day, I created a Malazan reading order that became quite popular. This was in response to a terrible list published on Tor.com, apparently itself derived from a confused communication with Steven Erikson and Ian Esslemont (they themselves did not approve of the list as a reading order).

My reading order is pretty straightforward, being basically order of publication with a few shifts around taking into account spoilers and minimising breaking up storylines. I've seen various suggestions on how to improve the list over the years, but they usually come with caveats and trade-offs that make each of them questionable in different ways, though several have merit. The obvious one is that since the original list was published in 2017, multiple new Malazan novels have been published, so it makes sense to update the list to account for them.

NOTE: I have tried to minimise spoilers, but the map and some of the discussion text may nod to what storylines are in what book and area, which some may prefer to avoid.

The Wertzone Recommended Malazan Reading Order (rev. 2025): 

1. Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen #1), Steven Erikson
2. Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen #2), Erikson
3. Memories of Ice (Malazan Book of the Fallen #3), Erikson
4. House of Chains (Malazan Book of the Fallen #4), Erikson
5. Midnight Tides (Malazan Book of the Fallen #5), Erikson
6. Night of Knives (Novels of the Malazan Empire #1), Ian Cameron Esslemont
7. The Bonehunters (Malazan Book of the Fallen #6), Erikson
8. Return of the Crimson Guard (Novels of the Malazan Empire #2), Esslemont
9. Reaper's Gale (Malazan Book of the Fallen #7), Erikson
10. Stonewielder (Novels of the Malazan Empire #3), Esslemont
11. Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen #8), Erikson
12. Orb Sceptre Throne (Novels of the Malazan Empire #4), Esslemont
13. Dust of Dreams (Malazan Book of the Fallen #9), Erikson
14. The Crippled God (Malazan Book of the Fallen #10), Erikson
15. Blood and Bone (Novels of the Malazan Empire #5), Esslemont
16. Assail (Novels of the Malazan Empire #6), Esslemont
17. The God is Not Willing (The Tales of Witness #1), Erikson
18. No Life Forsaken (The Tales of Witness #2), Erikson
19. Legacies of Betrayal (The Tales of Witness #3, forthcoming), Erikson
20. Dancer's Lament (Path to Ascendancy #1), Esslemont
21. Deadhouse Landing (Path to Ascendancy #2), Esslemont
22. Kellanved's Reach (Path to Ascendancy #3), Esslemont
23. Forge of the High Mage (Path to Ascendancy #4), Esslemont
24. The Last Champion (Path to Ascendancy #5, forthcoming), Esslemont
25. tbc (Path to Ascendancy #6, forthcoming), Esslemont
26. Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas #1), Erikson
27. Fall of Light (Kharkanas #2), Erikson
28. Walk in Shadow (Kharkanas #3, forthcoming), Erikson

(obviously reading books that aren't out or even written yet would be an impressive feat, but this is just putting them into their probable places in the list based on what we know so far)

Standing outside the list for the time being: the six Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novellas are mostly self-contained stories exploring the backstory of three minor characters from Memories of Ice. They are fun but inessential. They can be read after Memories of Ice or whenever.

The Path to Ascendancy series (Dancer's Lament, Deadhouse Landing, Kellanved's Reach, Forge of the High Mage and the forthcoming Last Guardian, with one more book beyond that) are prequels which recontextualise a lot of what we think we know from the main series. Even though you can read them in the chronologically correct position, I think they work best as prequels after the main series.

As for the Kharkanas Trilogy (so far, Forge of Darkness and Fall of Light), you can read that right at the end or you can hold off until we know when the final book, Walk in Shadow, is coming out. I would, under no circumstances for a newbie, put it first.

Rationale for the order:

The order is mostly in order of publishing, although with a couple of caveats. Night of Knives is both the oldest novel in the series (it was written circa 1987, but not published until 2004) and chronologically takes place before Gardens of the Moon. However, the events of Night of Knives are not particularly germane to Gardens (the "big event" takes place off-page). Instead, Night of Knives is more important for the characters it establishes on Malaz Island. These characters do not recur in the series until The Bonehunters, over 4,000 pages later. It therefore makes more sense to read Night of Knives immediately before The Bonehunters.

House of Chains should be read before Midnight Tides: the events of Midnight Tides are actually being told in flashback by one character to another at the end of HoC. I know some people like to move Midnight Tides up because if you read in publishing order it "spoils" the fate of that character in Midnight Tides, but that's a bit weird as a reason. Plus moving Midnight Tides up disrupts the expertly-paced flow of the first four novels with the alternating between Genabackis and Seven Cities. Dumping Lether in the middle, although chronologically correct, throws off the pacing. Plus it also means you have to wait several thousand pages before catching up to the Lether crew in Reaper's Gale (which has to be read after The Bonehunters).

Return of the Crimson Guard should be read after The Bonehunters. In terms of publication order this is correct but also in terms of internal chronology. More than a year passes between The Bonehunters and Reaper's Gale, and Return of the Crimson Guard explores what happens during that year. In addition, Return has a major, game-changing ending which the later novels (by both Erikson and Esslemont) spoil. Delaying Return also means delaying the later Esslemont novels, which is a bad idea because of the way the later books interface with one another.

On different lists I place Stonewielder in different orders: it can be read immediately after Return of the Crimson Guard as this is chronologically correct (the two books are separated by a few weeks, and chronologically Reaper's Gale takes place after both books) or you can put Stonewielder after Reaper's Gale to mix things up a bit more between Erikson and Esslemont. However, Reaper's Gale ends with our heroes ready to go kick some backside in Kolanse. Putting Stonewielder after Gale means this storyline hangs for three full novels before we get back to it, whilst putting Stonewielder before Gale reduces this to two books.

The order is important because it places Toll the Hounds and Orb Sceptre Throne next to one another. Orb Sceptre Throne is the direct sequel to Toll the Hounds and Toll the Hounds does a lot of setup work for Orb Sceptre Throne which otherwise goes to waste or might be forgotten. Toll the Hounds is a significant amount of set-up with only one bit of pay-off at the end. Orb Sceptre Throne actually has the rest of the pay-off.

Dust of Dreams and The Crippled God are one extra-long novel split in two for length, so they should definitely be read together.

Blood and Bone takes place chronologically at the same time as The Crippled God (literally, our heroes in B&B see and sense the world-changing events at the end of The Crippled God three-quarters of the way through the book) and extends beyond it, so should be read after The Crippled God. Assail then picks up and resolves some storyline left dangling from Blood and Bone so they work well together.

So, what's wrong with the Tor list?

The Tor list suggests starting with the Kharkanas Trilogy novels Forge of Darkness and Fall of Light. This is really not a good idea. The Kharkanas Trilogy is a prequel in the purest form, working better when you have knowledge of the characters from chronologically later on. In addition, Fall of Light may be the most divisive Erikson novel published to date. Having it as the second book in the series I think would be a major mistake, as I've seen that novel drive off twenty-plus-year veterans of the series (some have returned, now that The God is Not Willing and No Life Forsaken have been more warmly received).

Sequential Order of the Series:

1. Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen #1), Steven Erikson (1999)
2. Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen #2), Erikson (2000)
3. Memories of Ice (Malazan Book of the Fallen #3), Erikson (2001)
4. House of Chains (Malazan Book of the Fallen #4), Erikson (2002)
5. Midnight Tides (Malazan Book of the Fallen #5), Erikson (2004)
6. The Bonehunters (Malazan Book of the Fallen #6), Erikson (2006)
7. Reaper's Gale (Malazan Book of the Fallen #7), Erikson (2007)
8. Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen #8), Erikson (2008)
9. Dust of Dreams (Malazan Book of the Fallen #9), Erikson (2009)
10. The Crippled God (Malazan Book of the Fallen #10), Erikson (2011)
11. Night of Knives (Novels of the Malazan Empire #1), Ian Cameron Esslemont (2004)
12. Return of the Crimson Guard (Novels of the Malazan Empire #2), Esslemont (2007)
13. Stonewielder (Novels of the Malazan Empire #3), Esslemont (2010)
14. Orb Sceptre Throne (Novels of the Malazan Empire #4), Esslemont (2012)
15. Blood and Bone (Novels of the Malazan Empire #5), Esslemont (2012)
16. Assail (Novels of the Malazan Empire #6), Esslemont (2014)
17. Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas #1), Erikson (2012)
18. Fall of Light (Kharkanas #2), Erikson (2016)
19. Walk in Shadow (Kharkanas #3, forthcoming), Erikson
20. Dancer's Lament (Path to Ascendancy #1), Esslemont (2016)
21. Deadhouse Landing (Path to Ascendancy #2), Esslemont (2017)
22. Kellanved's Reach (Path to Ascendancy #3), Esslemont (2019)
23. Forge of the High Mage (Path to Ascendancy #4), Esslemont (2023)
24. The Last Champion (Path to Ascendancy #5, forthcoming), Esslemont
25. tbc (Path to Ascendancy #6, forthcoming), Esslemont
26. The God is Not Willing (The Tales of Witness #1), Erikson (2021)
27. No Life Forsaken (The Tales of Witness #2), Erikson (2025)
28. Legacies of Betrayal (The Tales of Witness #3, forthcoming), Erikson

Can you just read the series sequentially and not bother mixing up Erikson and Esslemont?

You can, and with the expansion of the franchise across yet more sequel and prequel books since the original list, risking confusion, this is more viable than it was previously, but I would still broadly recommend against it. Although some readers are less keen on Esslemont as a writer than Erikson, it is inarguable that Esslemont's books are fully canon and Erikson does refer to them in his later novels. This is particularly egregious with regard to major events that happen in Return of the Crimson Guard; having them spoiled by later Erikson books is very lame compared to seeing the events happen as they should. In addition, Esslemont and Erikson paced their books and the events within them on the basis of their publication dates being mixed up, so it is more effective to read them with that in mind.

Chronological Order of the Series:

1. Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas #1), Erikson
2. Fall of Light (Kharkanas #2), Erikson
3. Walk in Shadow (Kharkanas #3, forthcoming), Erikson
4. Dancer's Lament (Path to Ascendancy #1), Esslemont
5. Deadhouse Landing (Path to Ascendancy #2), Esslemont
6. Kellanved's Reach (Path to Ascendancy #3), Esslemont
7. Forge of the High Mage (Path to Ascendancy #4), Esslemont
8. The Last Champion (Path to Ascendancy #5, forthcoming), Esslemont
9. tbc (Path to Ascendancy #6, forthcoming), Esslemont
10. Night of Knives (Novels of the Malazan Empire #1), Ian Cameron Esslemont
11. Midnight Tides (Malazan Book of the Fallen #5), Erikson
12. Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen #1), Steven Erikson
13. Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen #2), Erikson
14. Memories of Ice (Malazan Book of the Fallen #3), Erikson
15. House of Chains (Malazan Book of the Fallen #4), Erikson
16. The Bonehunters (Malazan Book of the Fallen #6), Erikson
17. Return of the Crimson Guard (Novels of the Malazan Empire #2), Esslemont
18. Stonewielder (Novels of the Malazan Empire #3), Esslemont
19. Reaper's Gale (Malazan Book of the Fallen #7), Erikson
20. Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen #8), Erikson
21. Orb Sceptre Throne (Novels of the Malazan Empire #4), Esslemont
22. Dust of Dreams (Malazan Book of the Fallen #9), Erikson
23. The Crippled God (Malazan Book of the Fallen #10), Erikson
24. Blood and Bone (Novels of the Malazan Empire #5), Esslemont
25. Assail (Novels of the Malazan Empire #6), Esslemont
26. The God is Not Willing (The Tales of Witness #1), Erikson
27. No Life Forsaken (The Tales of Witness #2), Erikson
28. Legacies of Betrayal (The Tales of Witness #3, forthcoming), Erikson

The chronological order of the series is, to be honest, far too bonkers for a first-time readthrough of the series. The Kharkanas Trilogy, which would open the narrative this way, is much more concerned with philosophical musings and is very slow-paced, with even less regard for newcomers than the main series. It's also notably incomplete. However, for a reread by a very experienced Malazan fan, this approach may yield interesting results.

Ultimately these are just options, and people should feel happy to read as they're enjoying and not get too hung up on different options. These are just ideas here.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Paramount shelves the STAR TREK "Kelvinverse" permanently

Paramount have decided to shelve the Star Trek "Kelvinverse" setting created by J.J. Abrams, apparently for good. This setting was the home to three Star Trek movies, Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) and Star Trek Beyond (2016), starring Chris Pine as Captain Kirk, Zachary Quinto as Spock and Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy.

A fourth film in the setting had been mooted for years, but Paramount had repeatedly flip-flopped on the idea, at one point considering a new film focusing on Chris Pine's Kirk travelling back in time to meet his father from the first film, played by a pre-Marvel Chris Hemsworth. They then shelved that idea to consider a pitch by Quentin Tarantino, who wanted to make a whole new Trek film with a new cast based on the classic episode A Piece of the Action. A new Kelvinverse movie was put into development a couple of years ago, with the cast all eager to return. However, Paramount have apparently grown cooler on the idea. The three films were very expensive but only the first one was a smash hit success, with the latter two generating modest returns at best. All three films also generated mixed critical notices, with praise for the cast and the general acting, but criticism for aspects of the visual design and the stronger focus on explosions and visual effects than the character-based storytelling Star Trek is best-known for. A common criticism was that the three films felt more like Star Wars than Trek, and it's telling that momentum for the films stalled when Abrams skipped town to work on actual Star Wars, directing both The Force Awakens (2015) and The Rise of Skywalker (2019).

In the meantime, the Star Trek franchise has returned to its ancestral home on television, with first Star Trek: Discovery and now Star Trek: Strange New Worlds taking on the classic time period, with new actors playing Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Uhura etc.

Firm plans for the new Star Trek movie have not fully settled, but it's rumoured that Paramount is considering a back-to-basics approach about the "origin story" of the Federation and Starfleet. This has alarmed Star Trek fans already annoyed with the franchise's obsession with going backwards rather than forwards, and its increasingly self-contradictory canon and continuity, already stretched by this constant revisiting and rewriting of the show's past.

Simultaneously, Scott Bakula has been pushing for a return to the franchise in his role from Star Trek: Enterprise as Jonathan Archer, the captain of the original NX-01 Enterprise who later became one of the first Presidents of the Federation. It would be interesting if these ideas merged and we got a new, hopefully more grounded and less explosion-driven Trek film featuring one of its more popular leads, but this may be rather an optimistic idea.

The future of Star Trek should become clearer in the coming months. In the meantime, Paramount+ should air the fourth season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and the first season of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy in 2026.

MASS EFFECT TV series to be an original story set after the original video game trilogy

BioWare have confirmed that Amazon's upcoming Mass Effect TV series will be an original story, set after the original video game trilogy.

Amazon have been developing a TV project based on the video game franchise for some years now. The original announcement sounded like the show would be based directly on the events of the original games, Mass Effect (2007), Mass Effect 2 (2010) and Mass Effect 3 (2012). The original story depicts humanity trying to establish itself on the galactic scene, where several, much older races dominate a multi-civilisation society based at an ancient, gargantuan space station known as the Citadel. The protagonist, Commander Shepard, becomes the first human accepted into the elite Spectre organisation, given wide latitude to track down a renegade agent named Saren. From a small start, the trilogy expanded into a massive war story with the galaxy under attack from an ancient alien force known as the Reapers and Shepard having to assemble a vast fleet and army to stand against them.

The fourth game in the series, Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017) avoided having to commit to any outcome from the story by being set centuries later and over two million light years away, with a fleet of exploration ships reaching the Andromeda galaxy after centuries in stasis. The game was not as well-received as others in the series. BioWare did enjoy success with the release of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition in 2022, a moderate remaster of the series.

Reportedly the Mass Effect TV series is still a year away from shooting, let alone airing. Doug Jung is producing and showrunning. Meanwhile, BioWare are developing a new Mass Effect video game, but there hasn't been much news about the game for a while.

Doctor Who: Season 23 - The Trial of a Time Lord

The Doctor has been summoned by the Time Lords to a remote space station, there to stand trial again for interfering in the affairs of other worlds and times. His memory of recent events wiped (and his concern for his missing companion Peri growing), the Doctor has to formulate a defence in a trial where he doesn't know the rules, and the other side is not playing fair.

During the transmission of the twenty-second season of Doctor Who in early 1985, BBC controller Michael Grade tried to cancel the show. The resulting blowback of public opinion saw the BBC give it a stay of execution, an eighteen-month break to recover its creative mojo and come back swinging, but with a reduced count of just fourteen, 25-minute episodes, the shortest season in the show's history (and, in runtime at least, shorter than even the most recent Disney co-produced seasons).

Surprisingly, the BBC made no effort to refresh the show's creative team. Executive producer John Nathan-Turner and script editor Eric Saward remained in-situ (to even their own bemusement) and were given very little direction on how to handle the show's return. They did decide to dump the scripts they were developing, including the return of the Celestial Toymaker (that would have to wait for another forty years, in the event), the Ice Warriors and Sil, and instead developed a new story arc. They decided that, since the show was on trial by the BBC in reality, they would put the Doctor on trial in the story itself, an idea some (including star Colin Baker) found too cute, but does have a sort of perverse appeal.

Technically, Season 23 consists of one fourteen-part story called The Trial of a Time Lord, although this is a bit cheesy. More accurately, the season consists of three four-part stories that are linked by scenes back in the courtroom before the story is resolved in a concluding two-parter. These scenes are well-played by Colin Baker, the superb Lynda Bellingham as the Inquisitor and the accomplished Michael Jayston as the prosecutor, the Valeyard, though their use can be variable: sometimes commenting intelligently on the story, and at other times descending into acrimonious bickering.

The first four-parter, informally known as The Mysterious Planet, sees the Doctor and Peri arrive on the planet Ravolox, where they get involved in mysterious events revolving around two alien mercenaries, Sabalom Glitz and Dibber, the primitives who inhabit the surface of Ravolox and the more sophisticated society living in an underground society under the oversight of a robot with a very stupidly-sized head. The story is a classic Who culture clash playing off the different factions.

This is the effective swansong of legendary scriptwriter Robert Holmes, who had written or script-edited almost all of Doctor Who's all-time greatest stories and made a return in Season 21 with the epic The Caves of Androzani (and Season 22's okay Mark of the Rani). The Mysterious Planet was written when he was very ill, and is not among his best scripts. However, many of the Classic Holmes Hallmarks are present and correct. The secondary cast is very good, spearheaded by the Glitz-and-Dibber double act (Tony Selby and Glen Murphy sparking off one another superbly), and the robot villain is channelling 150% pure Douglas Adams energy. Joan Sims feels like she should be miscast as Queen Katryca, but instead it's a barmy bit of casting that works better than it should.

The story does descend into more running-around-corridors than it really should, and the Planet of the Apes-esque story elements are not as effective as they should be, but overall this is okay. A mid-tier slice of Robert Holmes whimsy, enlivened by some hints that things are not as they first appear. The story is enlivened by its opening visual effects sequence, a motion control tracking shot of the Time Lord space station with the TARDIS caught in its tractor beam, easily the most striking model shot in all twenty-six seasons of the original run of the show (and, given its insane cost, not one to be repeated again).

Mindwarp, the second serial, is a sequel-of-sorts to the preceding season's Vengeance on Varos and sees the return of the revolting Sil, played again with wicked relish by Nabil Shaban. The story this time revolves around Sil's boss, Kiv (a more stately performance by Christopher Ryan), who is dying and whose brain needs to be transplanted to another body, resulting in a lot of scheming as he looks for another host candidate, whilst simultaneously trying to take economic advantage of a planet ruled by King Yrcanos, played with scene-stealing thunder by Brian Blessed.

Yes! After many years, Doctor Who was finally able to snatch up a guest role by the legendary King of Shout himself, between his more standard activities of climbing K2 equipped only with spoons and a mask to drain more oxygen than normal from him, for the challenge. Blessed not only steals the story, he packs it up and slings it over his shoulder before travelling to Mars purely under his own motive power. Your tolerance for the story will entirely depend on your tolerance for Brian Blessed at his absolutely least-restrained and most unhinged. "WE MUST FIND WEAPONS, SUCH AS THOSE THAT TURN OUR ENEMIES INTO SLIME! WE'LL PILE THE HEADS OF OUR ENEMIES BEFORE US LIKE MELONS IN A HEAP!"

If your TV speakers survive that ordeal, there are some additional pluses, like a fully throttleable performance by Patrick Ryecart as the brain-transplanting doctor Crozier, and, of course, that ending. The ending to Mindwarp was, for six weeks anyway, Doctor Who at its absolutely most mind-blowingly tragic, horrible and shocking, far moreso than when Adric wiped out the dinosaurs with his own mediocrity (and several million tons of exploding antimatter attached to a starship travelling at insane velocity, but still). It's one of the very rare times when the show feels like it's gone out of control and doing something fresh, dangerous and mind-blowing, all helped by Nicola Bryant giving her best performance to date. Of course, the show manages to torpedo even that a few weeks later, but it's still a brain-melting end to a Classic Doctor Who story that not just breaks its normal rules, but atomises them.

Unfortunately, outside of the ending, some solid performances and Blessed's Defcon 1-level shouting, the story suffers a little in pacing. Whilst Shaban is outstanding, Sil doesn't actually have much to do in the story given the villain duties are being carried out by Kiv and Crozier, and Blessed is dominating everything else. There's also more the whiff of panto about this season than any prior, and this story is probably the most panto-like of the lot. Still, it's quite an unusual Doctor Who story in many respects.

Terror of the Vervoids is, perhaps to make up for Mindwarp, almost an aggressively normal story in comparison. The Doctor and new companion Mel have arrived on a space liner transporting a bunch of people through space. Murders take place, and the Doctor - who is handily known to the captain - has to investigate.

This story isn't the best-regarded, which is interesting as it may be the strongest of the season. The standard murder mystery plot in a constrained setting is a good fit for Doctor Who, making it odd it hasn't been used more often, and the decision to have the Doctor already known to the captain, thus avoiding two episodes of the Doctor being the prime suspect, is a very smart way of sidestepping that problem, allowing him to just investigate. The mystery is reasonable, and the cast of characters who may be involved is well-drawn, including a splendid guest turn from Honor Blackman (Cathy Gale from The Avengers, an early genre rival of Doctor Who's).

The story probably gets its reputation from the introduction of Bonnie Langford as Mel. Rotating off the popular Nicola Bryant in favour of a musical star and dancer not known for her heavyweight acting deeply annoyed the fans at the time, but it has to be said that time has been kind to Langford in the role. Her more recent appearances in the modern show have been strong, and her performance in Season 23 is actually very credibly good. It's only in Season 24 where the writers don't seem to know what to do with her that she risks becoming grating. In this story she's bossy and takes charge, but this is a fresh change from Peri, who was often far too passive in the face of the Doctor's bluster. The story also suffers from the mystery element giving way to a more standard "monsters running amok" ending, although the Vervoids are at least a striking and memorable design, and their motivation - survival - is effective.

The end of the story is also interesting, with the Doctor backed into a corner and having to morally question his decisions in a way that he didn't all that often in the classic series, in the process inadvertently giving the Valeyard the ammunition he needs to close his case and push for the Doctor's execution.

As people I think more commonly know, the season was supposed to end with a two-parter co-written by Robert Holmes and Eric Saward, but Holmes passed away having delivered only a rough draft of the first episode of the two. Saward and Nathan-Turner clashed horrendously over the finale, which ended on a cliffhanger with the Doctor and Valeyard locked in combat and falling into space, which Nathan-Turner felt was a gift to allow the BBC to cancel the show. Saward, who wanted to honour Holmes's dying request to end the story that way, was not to be moved and quit on the spot, taking his own draft for the final episode with him. Nathan-Turner had to call in Vervoids writers Pip and Jane Baker to pen the finale with no recourse to Saward's script at all.

The resulting two-parter, The Ultimate Foe, is not fantastic, and clearly had some major writing compromises going on, but it holds together better than you might expect (as even Saward had to admit many years later). The first part recalls The Deadly Assassin, with the Doctor and Valeyard doing battle amidst surreal imagery inside the Matrix, the Time Lord computer system. The second part sees the Doctor joined by Sabalom Glitz, Mel and even the Master as they team up to take down the Valeyard. It's okay, with some solid scares (the cliffhanger with the Doctor being sucked into quicksand is memorable, and the resolution quite amusing), but it wraps up the entire season arc far too perfunctorily, and somehow manages to introduce a new cliffhanger that the show never resolves again, whilst also retconning the splendidly dark ending of Mindwarp out of existence.

Overall, Season 23 of Doctor Who (***) is the definition of okay-but-underwhelming. None of the four stories are absolutely terrible or unwatchable, but it is overall less than the sum of its parts. It's a season straining almost visibly under the weight of behind-the-scenes chaos, but managing to deliver some watchable entertainment for all of that.

The season is available on DVD and Blu-Ray as well as streaming on BBC iPlayer in the UK and various services overseas.

• 23.1 - 23.4: The Mysterious Planet (***)
• 23.5 - 23.8: Mindwarp (***)
• 23.9 - 23.12: Terror of the Vervoids (***½)
• 23.13 - 23.14: The Ultimate Foe (**½)

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

No Life Forsaken by Steven Erikson

Yet again, rebellion is stirring on the subcontinent of Seven Cities. More than a decade ago, the native tribes launched a vast rebellion, the Whirlwind, to destroy the occupying armies of the Malazan Empire. Through the legendary last stand of Coltaine and his army, escorting thousands of refugees to safety, and the arrival of the legendary Bonehunters, the rebellion was defeated. But the embers continue to burn and threaten to ignite once more. Events are converging on the city of G'danisban, seat of High Fist Arenfall, as both the Malazans and the followers of the goddess Va'Shaik seek to set in motion the rebellion and resulting bloodbath...or try to stop it.

Twenty years ago, Steven Erikson was gleefully producing his Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence at a pace that even Brandon Sanderson might feel was a bit much. Every year-and-a-bit, Erikson would unload a near-thousand-page brick packed with epic battles, moral philosophising and wry humour. We ate well, my friends, and perhaps took it for granted.

In the decade and a half since the Malazan Book of the Fallen was completed in all its yak-stunning, shelf-bending, potsherd-uncovering glory, Erikson has switched to a more well-deserved, chilled pace. He has produced two volumes of a prequel trilogy (put on hold due to slow sales, but he's back at work on the finale now), Kharkanas; several unrelated science fiction works; and has now delivered the second of four books in a planned Malazan sequel series, checking in on the Malazan Empire and its world ten years after the events of The Crippled God.

This new series - The Tales of Witness - feels like the main Malazan sequence in miniature. The original series opened on the continent of Genabackis before switching to Seven Cities. The first book in this new series, The God is Not Willing (2021), checked in on Genabackis and here this second volume switches gears and visits Seven Cities once again. No Life Forsaken acts as a sequel or coda to the entire Seven Cities arc from the original series, in fact, including House of Chains and The Bonehunters. That arc in the original series was about Seven Cities fighting for its independence and ultimately failing, whilst here the original, failed rebellion is now inspiration for a bloodier, renewed fight.

No Life Forsaken muses on the idealism of the cause. The Malazan Empire, especially under the redoubtable Emperor Mallick Rel (the effective villain of the original Seven Cities arc, particularly the monumental Deadhouse Gates), is an imperial, occupying, exploitative power and the natives demanding their independence is understandable. But the natives of Seven Cities are also a fractious and unruly lot, more likely to plunge the subcontinent into an orgy of violence, religious blood-letting, ancestral score-settling and a genocidal pursuit of ideological or holy purity than they are to usher in a new age of enlightened peace. It's interesting that there are those on both sides who seem eager for war and also those anxious to stop the carnage before it can start.

As usual with Erikson, the story rotates through a cast of almost entirely new faces (only three characters and a donkey show up from earlier novels and have a bare handful of paragraphs between them). We have the High Fist of Seven Cities and the Adjunct of the Emperor, who has shown up to gauge the threat of rebellion from both the natives and the charismatic Fist himself. The Claw, the sorcerous and elite agents of the Emperor's will, are on the scene as well. Malazan soldiers and marines, philosopher-savants one and all, also provide perspectives on events, alongside the High Priestess of Va'Shaik in G'danisban and even the goddess herself, along with her Inquisitor, a figure noted for his peculiar brand of atheism. Mercenaries, criminals, a random Toblakai (no, not that one), an Elder God or two, and of course Nub, King of the Bhokaral (all hail Nub!), all chime in. The book may be promising more than its modest page count can allow, in fact, and several subplots are left to unfold off-screen.

Also as usual, Erikson is more interested in the themes of his story than delivering crowd-pleasing results. The book hints at gargantuan battles of apocalyptic proportions and teases vast scenes of carnage, but never quite gets there. Everyone involved in the story seems to have read Deadhouse Gates and The Bonehunters as well, and are not eager to blow up more cities and kill tens of thousands of people for the spectacle. The struggle in the book is less between opposed ideologies or politics or faiths, but between common sense and those who measure success in how high the innocent dead can be stacked like cordwood. No life should be forsaken, indeed.

It's certainly a slower, more thoughtful book than The God is Not Willing, which felt like a more crowd-pleasing, focused, directed slice of Malazan. This book is the other side of the series, the more philosophical, chewing-the-fat and enjoying wry humour side of things. It's not Malazan at its most indulgent - the book fills just 400 pages, making it a novella by some of Erikson's earlier standards - and the story benefits from its slimline approach, but there's definitely less of an urge to deliver the Greatest Hits to readers. Karsa fans will probably be unsurprised to hear that, once again, he is playing the role of Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Volume. On the negative side the book feels like it takes a while to find its feet but, once it does, events accelerate to a typically impressive conclusion.

No Life Forsaken (****½) is a dusty, thoughtful book that takes a while to get going, but once it does it delivers a thoughtful and striking piece of compassionate, intelligent fantasy. And the good news is that we won't have too long to wait for more, as Erikson completed the third book in the series, Legacies of Betrayal, at the same time as this one, and hopefully that should be with us next year.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

China Miéville announces new novel, THE ROUSE, for 2026

China Miéville and Picador have announced a new novel. The book will be Miéville's first full-length, solo novel since 2012's Railsea.

Miéville has been working on the novel for over twenty years and has suggested it will be his magnum opus. The book is currently listed as 1,264 pages in length, which would comfortably be his longest-ever novel.

Details on the novel are light, although it will be published by Picador rather than the more genre-oriented imprint Tor UK, which has handled most of Miéville's work to date. The blurb is as follows:

From the bestselling and award-winning master of speculative fiction comes a deeply moving, decade- and continent-spanning epic: forced to investigate a devastating personal tragedy, an ordinary woman stumbles on dark conspiracies, and provokes the attention of uncanny forces.

The Rouse will be published on 17 September 2026 in the UK.

Doctor Who: Season 22

The Doctor continues his adventures in time and space in his new sixth incarnation, along with his American companion Peri. The Doctor's latest adventures see him crossing wits with the Daleks, Cybermen, the Master and the Rani, among others.

The twenty-second season of Doctor Who aired in 1985 and came at a strange time for the show's fortunes. Peter Davison had departed the previous season as the Fifth Doctor and we'd already experienced a full serial with Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor, one in which he'd memorably tried to kill his assistant Peri in the throes of post-regenerative madness. Fans were sceptical of the new incarnation and the BBC was suffering a series of renewed complaints about the show being too dark and too violent. The new BBC1 controller, Michael Grade, also hated the show and controversially decided to cancel it after the production of the twenty-second season, sparking massive public outcry (and a charity single so horrible that all record of it needs to be struck from existence). The BBC commuted Doctor Who's death sentence to instead a longer-than-normal hiatus, mandating changes to production and improvements in quality for its return (orders that were, arguably not really followed through on).

This was all too late to impact Season 22 itself though. The show returned to airing on Saturday nights, its spiritual home, with a new format. Instead of most serials consisting of four 25-minute episodes (through, between the credits and recaps, the amount of actual new material in an episode averaged 20-22 minutes), this season consisted mostly of serials of two 45-minute episodes, with one coming in at three. The season was still the same length as almost every season since Jon Pertwee's debut in 1970, but how that length was assigned had changed.

Whether it improved things or not is questionable: script editor Eric Saward was keen, feeling it enabled a longer setup of the plot and characters, with less of a mad rush to get the Doctor involved, but fans seemed to feel that this could mean the Doctor not joining the action until too late in the day. The longer setups were sometimes effective, but also sometimes meant a rushed conclusion instead. There was also the practical consideration that the BBC also asked for 25-minute edits of the episodes for overseas transmission, meaning that a mini-cliffhanger had to occur halfway through every episode anyway, so in some cases the longer episodes just feel like two standard episodes squashed together. Still, an interesting idea and one that would be picked up again by the modern show when it began in 2005.

Things initiate with Attack of the Cybermen. The Cybermen had impressed with their return in force in Season 19's Earthshock and their short appearances in the anniversary special The Five Doctors, so bringing them back again was a no-brainer. John Nathan-Turner was interested in bringing in the topical element of Halley's Comet, whose return in 1986 was being hugely hyped up, and also in doing a story that tied in with Doctor Who's past. Fan consultant Ian Levine was talked to extensively about the ideas for the story, resulting in a decision to bring in elements from The Tenth Planet (the first Cyberman story from Season 4, airing in 1966) and Tomb of the Cybermen (a Season 5 story from 1967). The problem was that in 1985, Doctor Who fans did not have access to on-demand streaming or media releases, and neither story was available on VHS (The Tenth Planet missing its final episode and Tomb of the Cybermen being completely missing until its fortuitous discovery and return to the BBC archive seven years after this story transmitted). Levine also suggested some random references to the very first Doctor Who story, An Unearthly Child, such as a return to the Totter's Lane junkyard. Finally, Saward was keen to reintroduce the character of Lytton from the preceding season's Resurrection of the Daleks.

The result is a story that is belaboured and bowed by the weight of continuity, although it ironically suffers less from this today, when you can actually watch most of the those preceding Cyber-stories on the BBC iPlayer without too much trouble. It's again heavy on action, with lots of exploding Cybermen and fierce laser gun battles, and this can be fun (and certainly a change from the normal problem of Doctor Who monsters being indestructible to normal weapons) but threatens to be monotonous. The story also suffers from a bit too many elements (a common Saward trope) with Halley's Comet, the fixing of the TARDIS chameleon circuit, the Lytton story, the Cryon story, the Cybermen machinations, a failed bank heist and the Doctor and Peri still trying to find their post-regenerative footing all vying for screen time. For all that, the story actually holds together reasonably well and the pacing is certainly very brisk. Production values are reasonable, for once, although the Cyber Controller (reinstated in the story at John Nathan-Turner's insistent, somewhat redundantly) is wasted.

The story also marks the continuation of Nicola Bryant being asked to walk around in ridiculously revealing outfits (her pink leotard is a bit incongruous in the London sewers), culminating in even the Cybermen thinking it's a bit much and insisting she change into something more sensible for their trip to Telos. When Bryant is allowed to actually act as Peri and is given some meaty dialogue or emotions to play, she does very well, but these opportunities are few and far between in the story. The story also fails to capitalise on something it only realises in its closing minutes, that the Doctor has badly misjudged Lytton and failed to realise he is capable of redemption, leading to bitter regret. For all that Saward has a mixed reputation in Who fan circles, he does at least try to make his guest characters more complex, realistic characters. The casting for this story is also superb, with a brilliant turn in particular from Maurice Colbourne as Lytton and Brian Glover as Griffiths, though once again Saward seems inclined to kill characters the second they stop serving a story function, a trope which is starting to verge on the comedic. An interesting story, but a messy one with a lot of unfulfilled potential.

The second story, Vengeance on Varos, is stronger and cleverer. The Doctor arrives on a planet where politicians have to keep their constituents happy not just around the time of elections, but every single day. Instant popularity polls are carried out for every decision and if the elected officials are not up to snuff, they can be punished with pain or even death. The satire verges on the Malcolm Hulkeian (though its actually newcomer-to-the-show Phillip Martin writing), with the secondary characters as well-drawn as any Robert Holmes story. Particularly, utterly magnificent is Nabil Shaban as Sil, the most repulsive villain in Doctor Who history with easily the best prosthetics work. Martin Jarvis is also very strong as the Governor, and Jason Connery provides some rare eye candy for the other side as he is forced to spend half the story in a state of undress. Game of Thrones fans may also spot a young Owen Teale (Alliser Thorne) as a villainous guard.

The story is also notable for its wonderfully modern-feeling metaplot, as much of the adventure is recorded and transmitted to the people of Varos as it unfolds, leading to some superb commentary from the characters watching the story unfold. In a stronger season, the story would perhaps not stand out as much, but arguably it's the strongest or joint-strongest story of the season, so is more notable.

The Mark of the Rani introduces the titular Rani, a renegade Time Lord who, unlike the Master, is not totally evil but instead amoral, interested only in pure research. A superb setup sees the Doctor and Peri arrive in an early 19th Century mining village riven by tensions between the local industrialist and Luddite workers scared of being replaced by machines (oddly topical!), with the Rani (a barnstorming performance by Kate O'Mara) manipulating the situation to her advantage. Unfortunately, the story takes a bit of a nosedive due to the interference of Anthony Ainley's Master, who feels very awkwardly shoehorned into the script. Pip and Jane Baker, not the most popular Doctor Who writers, actually deliver some good work in their debut, the Rani's TARDIS is a very good bit of slightly surreal design (with dinosaur embryos suspended around a central console that arguably puts the Doctor's to shame) and there's both exceptional location filming and some impressive stuntwork. The over-acting and cheesy dialogue for the Master derail (pun intended) what could have been a much stronger piece. Still, it's watchably entertaining and nobody can take over a scene like O'Mara can.

The Two Doctors came from John Nathan-Turner feeling that The Five Doctors was a big hit, so he asked Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines if they wanted to come back for a further story down the line. The story sees the Second Doctor and Jamie running afoul of a conspiracy between the villainous Androgums and the Sontarans, with the Sixth Doctor and Peri showing up to lend a hand. The story is again enhanced by a wonderful guest cast, led by Troughton and Hines at their best, but with Blake's 7's immortally villainous Jacqueline Pearce threatening to steal every scene she's in. John Stratton, Laurence Payne, James Saxon and Carmen Gomez all deliver great performances in possibly one of Who's strongest-ever guest casts, all with a script by the returning Robert Holmes, unleashing devastatingly witty lines.

All of this is extremely good, but the direction is a bit pedestrian, and the story's length - at three 45-minute episodes this is the longest Doctor Who story to air since Season 16's The Armageddon Factor - sees a fair bit of filler added in. The Sontarans also feel a bit pointless, and the story could have easily taken place without them. The location filming in Seville is beautiful and they clearly want to show off the locations by having characters wander around the city and the surrounding Spanish countryside for a bit longer than is optimal, whilst this probably the most egregious story for using Peri as eye candy, although she is also given a bit more do in the story than most of her instalments, which is a relief. It's also clear that Patrick Troughton is having an absolute whale of time, with formidable comic timing and some of the most outrageously good eyebrow-acting you will ever see. His passing just a couple of years after this story was very sad. It just feels the story is overlong and a bit flat in its direction, otherwise this could have been the season highlight.

Timelash, on the other hand, is clearly the season lowlight. The idea isn't bad, with the Doctor returning to a planet he has visited previously to see it crushed under the heel of the villainous Borad, who likes to punish people by throwing them into the time vortex. There's a bunch of rebels who need to rebel (mostly by running around corridors, in the time-proven manner) and need the Doctor's help to do so, and a fascinating secondary villain performance by Blake's 7 star Paul Darrow, here delivering an over-the-top performance that sort of works (reportedly to get back at Colin Baker for a scene-stealing turn on the third season of Blake's 7 five years earlier). The problem is that the story is thin, the secondary cast is undistinguished, and the gimmick of having a temporary companion who turns out to be a famous person is under-utilised. There's also some appalling effects, bad sets and some flat performances (reportedly the result of Nathan-Turner pulling his stars out of rehearsal to go and do PR in the States) resulting in a story that is, at best, deeply insipid.

The season ends with Revelation of the Daleks, an interesting and offbeat story by Saward. Some of his tropes are present here, but the story is less action-packed and more thoughtful than normal, with a well-drawn secondary cast with some great performances, particularly by Terry Molloy, Eleanor Bron, William Gaunt and Clive Swift. Alexei Sayle and Jenny Tomasin give more acquired performances, interesting but more arguable in their success. It's a bit of an odd story with Davros harvesting the dead to turn into Daleks and various factions in the mortuary of Tranquil Repose feuding with one another. The Doctor and Peri spend more than half the story just getting into the building, leaving little time to formulate plans to defeat Davros, and the Daleks are at their least interesting here, despite the great paintjob for Davros's Imperial Daleks (who will be revisited more formidably in Season 25's Remembrance of the Daleks).

There are some really effective horror moments, as well as black comedy, and Saward even remembers to leave a few characters alive at the end so the Doctor can pretend to have achieved an actual victory. There are some stupid moments, with the episode one cliffhanger (in which Davros engineers a polystyrene statue to fall onto the Doctor to not kill him, just scare him) being one of the most underwhelming and weirdly-contrived in the show's history. Still, Graeme Harper's direction is outstanding, the musical score is superb and the horror vibe is for once effectively melded into a Doctor Who story, with some good location filming and a more chill relationship between the Doctor and Peri being much more welcome.

Season 22 of Doctor Who (***½) is perfectly watchable, if rarely outstanding. Colin Baker improves as the Doctor over the course of the season, and every story bar Timelash has some merit to it. Even Timelash arguably falls into the "so bad it's good" category thanks to the sheer volume of scene-chewing going on by Paul Darrow. Nobody's going to call it the best season of Who ever, but if anything it's probably slightly underrated.

The season is available on DVD and Blu-Ray as well as streaming on BBC iPlayer in the UK and various services overseas.

• 22.1 - 22.2: Attack of the Cybermen (***½)
• 22.3 - 22.4: Vengeance on Varos (****)
• 22.5 - 22.6: The Mark of the Rani (***½)
• 22.7 - 22.9: The Two Doctors (***½)
• 22.10 - 22.11: Timelash (*½)
• 22.12 - 22.13: Revelation of the Daleks (****)

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Blogging Roundup: 1 September to 1 November 2025

 

The Wertzone

News

• Doctor Who to return with new special in 2026, ends partnership with Disney
• RUMOUR: One missing Doctor Who episode has been located
• Yellowjackets to end with its fourth season
• Trailer for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms released
• Star Trek fans finally get the Battle of Wolf 359 they were denied in the 1990s
• New Star Trek video game will let you decide whether to murder Tuvix or not
• Next Star Wars movie gets its first trailer
• Pinnacle Entertainment launches Deadlands: The Dark Ages Kickstarter
• Daniel Abraham provides update on final Kithamar Trilogy novel

Reviews

• The Forest
• Thud! by Terry Pratchett
• Doctor Who: Season 21
• Alien: Earth - Season 1
• Doctor Who: Season 20
• Doctor Who: Season 19
• Titanfall 2 (campaign)
• Doctor Who: Season 18
• Doctor Who: Season 17
• House of the Dragon: Season 2
• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition
• Wheel World
• Foundation: Season 3
• Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
• Doctor Who: Season 16 - The Key to Time

Atlas of Ice and Fire

• A World Map of Carnival Row

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, pleae consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

DOCTOR WHO to return with new special in 2026, ends partnership with Disney

The BBC has confirmed that Doctor Who will return in 2026 with a Christmas special to be written by Russell T. Davies, with a further series to follow. The news was announced alongside the widely-expected confirmation that Disney will cease its international coproduction and distribution agreement for the series.

The BBC and Disney joined forces to produce Doctor Who in 2022, with Russell T. Davies returning to helm the show he'd previously run from 2005 to 2010, bringing it to massive levels of international success. The show's popularity had waned during the latter part of the long run of Davies' success Steven Moffat and that of a further showrunner, Chris Chibnall, forcing a rethink of the BBC's approach. The decision was made to partner with Disney to ensure there was one global streaming location for the show, rather than the previous hodgepodge approach.

The initial return of the show, in 2023 with three specials featuring the return of David Tennant as the Doctor to celebrate the franchise's 60th anniversary, was successful, but the subsequent Series 14 (confusingly rebranded as "Season 1" on Disney+) starring Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor saw a sharp decline in ratings, despite critical praise for several episodes. Series 15 repeated this pattern. Both seasons also saw sharp criticism for their messy and incoherent finales, and a greater reliance on magic and strange storytelling decisions rather than science. Gatwa also made a late choice to leave the series, resulting in extensive reshoots, including his somewhat bizarre regeneration into what appeared to be a new incarnation played by Billie Piper, who had previously played the Doctor's companion Rose from 2005 to 2007 and a Time Lord sentient weapon, the Moment, in the 50th Anniversary Special in 2013. Both the BBC and Russell have been vague on if Piper is indeed playing the Sixteenth Doctor or not. 

Disney also went some seismic changes during this time period, with a change in chief executive and a decision to refocus on films and entertainment rather than producing a vast number of streaming shows (a strategy also blamed for the decline in popularity of both Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe). Doctor Who's performance on Disney+ also appears to have been moderate at best, though given Disney's rumoured budget for the show (reportedly only $3.5 million per episode, matched by the BBC, a far cry from the $30 million+ spent per episode on some of its premium franchise shows), the investment was also not steep.

Other criticisms include that Disney was unable to secure the global repeat rights for the existing series, which remain scattered across multiple streaming platforms and physical media options worldwide. There are also rumours of creative clashes, with Disney and some BBC executives reportedly keen to chase those Doctor Who fans who watched Davies' first era as little kids and teenagers and are now in their twenties and thirties, whilst Davies wanted to chase the modern family audience, something that does not necessarily exist in the same way it did in 2005 (with little kids now more likely to be watching YouTube videos or playing Roblox).

The BBC announcement confirms that Doctor Who will return with a new Christmas Special to air in December 2026, and discussions about Series 16 have now begun. The existing sets remain intact at Bad Wolf Studios in Wales. The departure of Disney will certainly result in a reduced budget, though something on the order of $3-4 million per episode would still be quite high by British standards. Despite the low initial broadcast ratings for the previous series, the show continues to perform surprisingly well in physical media sales (which are otherwise drying up) and legacy streaming. The BBC also has limited other options for well-known, popular franchises with built-in audiences.

The Forest

Eric LeBlanc, a survival expert, is travelling with his son Timmy when their aircraft crash lands in a remote, coastal region of Canada. The last thing Eric remembers is a strange man, covered in red paint, removing the unconscious Timmy from the wreck. By the time Eric recovers, all of the other passengers still on the plane are dead, but many are missing. Finding himself alone in a hostile, remote wilderness with no way of contacting the outside world, Eric has to survive, learn the lay of the land and whom his enemies are, and find a way of rescuing his son.

The Forest is a first-person survival horror game, originally released in 2018 by Endnight Games after a lengthy stint in Early Access. Like most of its genre, the game has the player up against the odds, having to find food, water and shelter whilst surviving in a hostile wilderness. The Forest adds a narrative element, with the game requiring you to also track down your missing son and discover the secrets of the area the game takes place in, known as the Peninsula.

The game recalls, in a somewhat drier manner, the king of survival games, Subnautica. Like that game, it opens with a horrendous crash, leaving you alone in a hostile wilderness with zero idea of what to do. The game holds your hand even less than Subnautica's still fairly harsh opening, with your sole clues coming from a survival guide book, in which your character scribbles notes whilst also consulting it for information on how to build a fire, a log cabin, traps for animals etc.

The Forest can lure you into a false sense of security, by allowing you to build a formidable redoubt right next to your crash site early on, and you quickly fall into the loop of working out what you want to build per day and executing those tasks, whether it's resource-gathering, going hunting or fish, or exploring the landmass further. The landmass feels massive but is relatively compact, allowing you to traverse most of the map and back again in a single in-game day. However, The Forest is unusual in that its map is not static and will react to player activity. The Peninsula's tribal inhabitants are at first very wary of your presence and will not engage, but as you expand your operations, chop down trees, and start killing them, they will quickly mount a more hostile response. If they locate your base, they will start sending substantial forces against it, unless you vacate the area. In this way the game tries to allow you to build up a base of operations, but it also wants to encourage you to take a more active exploratory role on the map. Setting up multiple bases and moving between them, abandoning one area as the heat builds up only to return later, is a fine stratagem. There are also areas of the map much more remote from native activity, allowing you to build a more substantial fortress away from interference, at least for a while.

There are shades of Fallout 4 here, with the game throwing so much at you that it's easy to forget that you are on a quest to find your son (several achievements even riff on this, with the reward for building your first gazebo being a dry question, "Who's Timmy?"). The only clue the game can give you at the start is if you come close to a cave opening, with the game prompting you to explore them. Given that each cave tends to be crawling with...weird things, this can be a daunting process. Once you have worked out how to build some weapons (the bow is a lifesaver), don some makeshift armour and create light sources, the caves can gradually be tamed. The caves contain clues to your son's whereabouts and information on the other missing crewmembers, as well as starting to explain what the hell's been going on in this place to result in hordes of hungry cannibals and the creation of strange, barely-human creatures.

The Forest's narrative is light, lighter than even Subnautica's mostly-hands-off story and certainly much more than Grounded. The game's main goal here is atmosphere. The game builds an atmosphere of foreboding dread and horror, with brilliant visuals (these forests are among the best ever seen in a video game, even now) and absolutely fantastic sound effects: the whistling of the wind through the trees, the far-off cries of things in the woods which may or may not be aware of your proximity, waves crashing against rocks. The caves are foreboding, dark and disturbing, even more off-putting than the first time in Subnautica when you realise you have to drop really deep into the ocean to uncover the next clue on your road home.

Resource management is key, as in most survival games, and you have to proceed with caution as your character is quite squishy and fragile. You have to keep topped up with food and water, and finding a source of fresh water can be a headache all by itself. In a nice touch, you don't start with a map or compass, but can locate them later in the game. You fill in the map by physically travelling around locations, and gradually learn the lay of the land. This is a great touch, overcoming one weakness of those survival games which either give you a map straight up and make the game too easy, or don't give you a map at all, even when it's extremely illogical to do so.

The Forest is also a game that respects your time. All you really need to do is establish a small shelter with access to food (game is plentiful across the Peninsula) and water. You don't actually need to build a massive multi-level fortress surrounded by wooded walls which in turn are surrounded by rock walls with massive traps laid in front of them, with catapults located in your base to bombard attacking enemies. I never built a single zipline in my entire playthrough. The fact that the game allows you to do that is quite impressive. The game even allows you to play co-op with up to seven friends on PC (four players total on PlayStation), where the massive increase in manpower allows you to build some absolutely bonkers structures pretty quickly, although possibly at the expense of suspense and tension. An eight-man rumble squad with armour, bows and hatchets is going to tear through most enemies in the game very easily. Still, it's fun, and the game can also be played in VR.

If you take a single-minded, story-based approach, you can put The Forest away in well under 20 hours (though you may also end up wondering if the game should have been called The Caves, as you'll spend almost as much of your playthrough below ground as above), with the story also having multiple endings, though only one is canonical, and leads into the sequel, Sons of the Forest. If you decide to go mad building crazy stuff and ransacking the Peninsula for supplies, you can easily lose hundreds of hours on side-projects. The amount of freedom in the game is impressive.

On the negative side, although the environmental graphics are mostly excellent, creature and human character models are decidedly unimpressive. The game can definitely be obtuse at the start, and it can take a while to crack the proper gameplay loop of what you should be doing. Combat can be a bit janky, and though the AI of the enemy in how it patrols the Peninsula and hunts you down is excellent, enemy AI in direct combat situations is risible, with it being rather easy to get enemies stuck on geometry. Minor bugs can still be found, though given the game's openness and adaptability, some may have been unavoidable.

The Forest (****) is outstanding in its tone and atmosphere, the freedom for you to do what you want, and its light-touch horror storyline which still ends up being quite disturbing. This is a game which will stick you for a while, even if you don't spend that long in finishing it off. It's not perfect, but the jankiness resulting from its modest budget can add to the charm.

The Forest is available on PC and PlayStation 4 (and, via compatibility mode, PS5). A sequel, Sons of the Forest, was released last year.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.