Blog: typos and book emojis in title

src/content/blog/2026-02-04-book-review-the-tower-of-the-tyrant-jt-greathouse.md

@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 ---
-title: 'Book Review: "The Tower of the Tyrant" - J.T. Greathouse'
+title: '📖 Book Review: "The Tower of the Tyrant" - J.T. Greathouse'
 date: 2026-02-04T20:37:14.936Z
 slug: 2026-02-04-book-review-the-tower-of-the-tyrant-jt-greathouse
 author: Thomas Wilson
@@ -7,34 +7,33 @@ tags:
   - book-review
 
 ---
-I pre-ordered *The Tower of the Tyrant* (by J.T. Greathouse), not realising quite how chonky it was (just under 600 pages, and she's not a small hardback).  Which is why it sat on my bookshelf for several months.  Unfortunately, during those months, I polished off some of the best modern fantasy books I have read in the last decade[^1], so to be honest I was a little scared I'd come to this book with an unfairly skewed perspective.
-
-I ended up really enjoying it for what it was: a stand alone fantasy novel with a focus on world-building and ideas.  We follow, among others, Fola, a scholar in search of clues for how to speak to the dead.  She stumbles into a long-standing haunting in a country that is definitely not Fantasy Wales.  We watch as the old ways of Fantasy Wales are threatened by the Fantasy Catholic Church, or perhaps the Fantasy Roman Empire.
-
-After crashing through so many good series last year - it was refreshing to read something designed to be stand alone.  Fantasy authors keep writing books in a series, and fantasy readers keep buying them.  It makes sense, they've set up characters and a world that they (and their readers) want to spend time in.  See also: long-running detective series, or crime thrillers.
-
-Although the book was a bit hefty, it was self-contained.  And the author takes a stab at some quite big themes: how do we make meaning from the stories we're told, when they're as pliable to (mis)interpretation as stories are?  Why does an absence of fame, renown, or glory bear down on us when all other material needs are met?  Can anything ever be *enough* for the human psyche?  What if a chaotic forest goddess lives in the body of a young tree woman?  
-
-It doesn't answer those things fully.  Not the first three at least, that last one is actually explored in quite thorough detail.  But we all know those questions can't really be answered.  It would be a weird way to measure the quality of modern genre fiction: does it definitively explain, and then overcome, our shared wrestling with identity, self, and happiness?
-
-Greathouse engages with these ideas just enough.  Shows you them from enough angles, in a way that makes you realise their complexity.  It's not "good" or "bad", it's just... human.  Which is hard to do when the central narrative of your fantasy book is creating a series of intertwined good-vs-bad conflicts at the personal, political, and spiritual levels.  Because it's *still* a fantasy book.  Greathouse shows us the ability of love to overcome adversity, and the thrill of adventure and battle (though the conflict scenes themselves always felt a little rushed or skipped-over) - while also giving us a good level of ambiguity.  It's a tough needle to thread, and he does a good job, even if the pacing is a little uneven in places.
-
-And then, blessedly - it ends.  It gives you enough ambiguity for you to colour in the edges, or perhaps even draw the rest of the map.  To go back to my point from earlier: so many authors seem intent to explore each corner of a person or history over 5+ books.  I love books that do this, and I find the closing of a long-running narrative arc to be really pleasing.  But the author has done all the imagining for me.  
-
-I don't think it was a perfectly written book.  I think the character development is front-loaded then almost rushed-through at the end.  I never felt, as I like to feel when reading fantasy, that my characters are actually in danger.  Some people died, yes - but the minute you get a point-of-view chapter from that one side character half-way through the book, you know what's about to happen[^2].  
-
-I think the ambiguity around the competing magic systems is interesting, but I'm not convinced it would withstand much scrutiny.  Some things can just be ✨ v i b e s ✨, but I worry that a little more explanation might have made it a bit too obvious that some of the central national/religious/political differences either didn't exist at all or couldn't exist.  
-
-It's fine and good to say "actually we were inventing distinctions over nothingness" - but *show* me.  Show me how all the bloody same they all are, and how the characters, or societies, not noticing or admitting their sameness is a problem they are both inventing and then suffering for.  I can think of one or two things that could be an allegory for.  Or show me actually they *are* all different things.  And if that's the case, why weren't more people using multiple kinds of magic?  It leaned hard into the idea that these things were once known, but the knowledge has since been lost and no trace of it has been rediscovered or guessed-at.
-
-All of that said, one of the reasons I adore sci-fi and fantasy as genres is their ability to pose fantastic scenarios and then allow very grounded themes to emerge in their exploration[^3].  It's sort of like how I recommend everyone read Juno Dawson because takes you on a great ride through witches fighting to the death, and then suddenly you realise you're having to think about what gender and prejudice in western societies look like.  
-This book gave me that feeling.  Greathouse didn't stick the landing, but I don't think they're trying to show you all the technical complexity of flying a plane and *not* having it end in pyrotechnics.  I think they're telling you a cool story on a bus home when you're eighteen years old, and neither of you are completely sober, and then they get off one stop before you, and you just sort of sit there and think about what they said as you finish your journey.  That's a great feeling, and a rare one.  
-
-Books are so cool, dude.
-
-
-[^1]: Namely Joe Abercrombie's *The Age of Madness* trilogy.
-
-[^2]: They die, dear reader.  We may see it coming a mile off, but they did not.
-
-[^3]: My favourite example of this is Peter V. Brett's *Demon Cycle* series, which asks the question "what if demons came out at night to eat people?" and then slowly walks you to "what if the divine leader of a theocratic society was forced to slowly encounter the idea that there is no god?".  I have yet to persuade anyone to read this series because apparently that's an *awful* way to sell something.
+I pre-ordered *The Tower of the Tyrant* (by J.T. Greathouse), not realising quite how chonky it was (just under 600 pages, and she's not a small hardback).  Which is why it sat on my bookshelf for several months.  Unfortunately, during those months, I polished off some of the best modern fantasy books I have read in the last decade[^1], so to be honest I was a little scared I'd come to this book with an unfairly skewed perspective.
+
+I ended up really enjoying it for what it was: a stand alone fantasy novel with a focus on world-building and ideas.  We follow, among others, Fola, a scholar in search of clues for how to speak to the dead.  She stumbles into a long-standing haunting in a country that is definitely not Fantasy Wales.  We watch as the old ways of Fantasy Wales are threatened by the Fantasy Catholic Church, or perhaps the Fantasy Roman Empire.
+
+After crashing through so many good series last year - it was refreshing to read something designed to be stand alone.  Fantasy authors keep writing books in a series, and fantasy readers keep buying them.  It makes sense, they've set up characters and a world that they (and their readers) want to spend time in.  See also: long-running detective series, or crime thrillers.
+
+Although the book was a bit hefty, it was self-contained.  And the author takes a stab at some quite big themes: how do we make meaning from the stories we're told, when they're as pliable to (mis)interpretation as stories are?  Why does an absence of fame, renown, or glory bear down on us when all other material needs are met?  Can anything ever be *enough* for the human psyche?  What if a chaotic forest goddess lives in the body of a young tree woman?  
+
+It doesn't answer those things fully.  Not the first three at least, that last one is actually explored in quite thorough detail.  But we all know those questions can't really be answered.  It would be a weird way to measure the quality of modern genre fiction: does it definitively explain, and then overcome, our shared wrestling with identity, self, and happiness?
+
+Greathouse engages with these ideas just enough.  Shows you them from enough angles, in a way that makes you realise their complexity.  It's not "good" or "bad", it's just... human.  Which is hard to do when the central narrative of your fantasy book is creating a series of intertwined good-vs-bad conflicts at the personal, political, and spiritual levels.  Because it's *still* a fantasy book.  Greathouse shows us the ability of love to overcome adversity, and the thrill of adventure and battle (though the conflict scenes themselves always felt a little rushed or skipped-over) - while also giving us a good level of ambiguity.  It's a tough needle to thread, and he does a good job, even if the pacing is a little uneven in places.
+
+And then, blessedly - it ends.  It gives you enough ambiguity for you to colour in the edges, or perhaps even draw the rest of the map.  To go back to my point from earlier: so many authors seem intent to explore each corner of a person or history over 5+ books.  I love books that do this, and I find the closing of a long-running narrative arc to be really pleasing.  But the author has done all the imagining for me.  
+
+I don't think it was a perfectly written book.  I think the character development is front-loaded then almost rushed-through at the end.  I never felt, as I like to feel when reading fantasy, that my characters are actually in danger.  Some people died, yes - but the minute you get a point-of-view chapter from that one side character half-way through the book, you know what's about to happen[^2].  
+
+I think the ambiguity around the competing magic systems is interesting, but I'm not convinced it would withstand much scrutiny.  Some things can just be ✨ v i b e s ✨, but I worry that a little more explanation might have made it a bit too obvious that some of the central national/religious/political differences either didn't exist at all or couldn't exist.  
+
+It's fine and good to say "actually we were inventing distinctions over nothingness" - but *show* me.  Show me how all the bloody same they all are, and how the characters, or societies, not noticing or admitting their sameness is a problem they are both inventing and then suffering for.  I can think of one or two things that could be an allegory for.  Or show me actually they *are* all different things.  And if that's the case, why weren't more people using multiple kinds of magic?  It leaned hard into the idea that these things were once known, but the knowledge has since been lost and no trace of it has been rediscovered or guessed-at.
+
+All of that said, one of the reasons I adore sci-fi and fantasy as genres is their ability to pose fantastic scenarios and then allow very grounded themes to emerge in their exploration[^3].  It's sort of like how I recommend everyone read Juno Dawson because takes you on a great ride through witches fighting to the death, and then suddenly you realise you're having to think about what gender and prejudice in western societies look like.  
+This book gave me that feeling.  Greathouse didn't stick the landing, but I don't think they're trying to show you all the technical complexity of flying a plane and *not* having it end in pyrotechnics.  I think they're telling you a cool story on a bus home when you're eighteen years old, and neither of you are completely sober, and then they get off one stop before you, and you just sort of sit there and think about what they said as you finish your journey.  That's a great feeling, and a rare one.  
+
+Books are so cool, dude.
+
+[^1]: Namely Joe Abercrombie's *The Age of Madness* trilogy.
+
+[^2]: They die, dear reader.  We may see it coming a mile off, but they did not.
+
+[^3]: My favourite example of this is Peter V. Brett's *Demon Cycle* series, which asks the question "what if demons came out at night to eat people?" and then slowly walks you to "what if the divine leader of a theocratic society was forced to slowly encounter the idea that there is no god?".  I have yet to persuade anyone to read this series because apparently that's an *awful* way to sell something.

src/content/blog/2026-03-13--book-review-the-other-pandemic.md

@@ -0,0 +1,81 @@
+---
+title: 📖 Book review "The Other Pandemic"
+date: 2026-03-13T08:03:18.862Z
+slug: 2026-03-13--book-review-the-other-pandemic
+author: Thomas Wilson-Cook
+tags:
+  - book-review
+
+---
+
+I posted recently ([link](/blog/2026-02-27--started-reading-the-other-pandemic)) that I had started reading James Ball's *The Other Pandemic - How QAnon Contaminated the World*. ([bookshop.org](https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-other-pandemic-how-qanon-contaminated-the-world-james-ball/7618064)) I ended up finishing the book relatively soon after that post.
+
+I think this is a book worth reading, both if you're interested in social media and disinformation (as I am), but also if you're just someone who uses the internet (which I also am!).  If you're reading these words, you're at least one of the two, maybe both.
+
+It's a neat, concise piece that doesn't so much look at QAnon beliefs themselves (shame!), but rather where can extreme, far-right, libertarian, and violent beliefs come from?  (4chan.  They come from 4chan.)  And points out how they evolve as they move from uncouth internet backwater to mainstream Facebook groups and online media.
+
+Ball spends a great deal of the book looking at 4chan.  If you're not familiar with 4chan, you're familiar with their work.  It's a pseudonymous image board that was started in the early 2000s, itself a clone from an even older image board (2chan, or *futaba channel*).  It's a relatively old bastion of a certain age of the internet, and a certain kind of people.
+
+Ryan Broderick, author of the Garbage Day newsletter ([link](https://www.garbageday.email/), strong recommend) has very much informed the way I think about 4chan, which is as some kind of liminal, semi-fictitious space where early internet users were just sort of *weird*.  It's the place where early trans and far-right communities and coexisted online, both pushed to the fringes[^1], alongside furries, and weebs, flat-earthers, and probably just a whole bunch of very bored (mostly male) teenagers trying to say the most offensive things *for the lulz*.
+
+Although it started as a bit of a mixing pot, 4chan ended up spawning gamergate ([wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate)) which, as per Snopes ([link](https://www.snopes.com/articles/402899/what-was-gamergate/)) was:
+
+> The relentless, misogynistic verbal attacks -- including death threats, rape threats, swatting attempts, and doxxing -- that characterized the perpetrators were initially aimed at a particular woman who had been publicly accused of infidelity by a former boyfriend. Over time, the same pattern of abuse was directed at other women (and even some men) who were perceived as defending her. This escalating pattern of mob attacks and abuse went on, targeting multiple individuals, for more than a year
+
+Lest you think *gamergate* was "only" about games[^2] or games journalism, that's probably not true.  It was threats of violence and sexual violence, and also came with mob-like behaviour, where journalists who covered gamergate for what it is (violence) had to deal with harassment of them and their employer.
+
+Here, I think Ball side-steps the quagmire of assessing their actions, or (reported) feelings, as "valid" in some sense.  Mostly because it's not a book about gamergate (or armchair psychology).  But I think it's a somewhat notable absent voice from this conversation, and it doesn't get remedied when discussing actual QAnon beliefs.
+
+We take a look at events as a bit of a distance: through news reports and judicial statistics.  Personally, I would have liked to see how earnestly do the people involved in gamergate or QAnon believe what they're saying.  How much of it is a "legitimised" outlet for displaced anger?  How are they committing all the time and effort required for such a sustained, multi-directional attack on women, while also living the rest of their lives?
+
+But then we run into the worried conversation about platforming radical beliefs accidentally sanitising them.  And in doing so, you create your own pipeline.
+
+Ball sustains a kind of attention on 4chan that I came to realise was rare.  I genuinely wonder why.  Because it's distasteful?  Because it's not really a single thing?  Because journalists don't really understand what an image board *is*?  
+
+Notably in 2026, it's a website *not* owned by a multi-billion dollar advertising company.  To borrow the parlance of the modern marketing economy, it's gained a loyal, engaged demographic of individuals who depend on the site for their world view.  This is a valuable asset in the modern economy, by way of selling the attention of its users to other individuals.
+
+To use more human language - it's a place where enough people believed harassment was an *appropriate* (and legal) response to a situation (somebody being broken up with).  And it helped them sustain and self organise from a group of online individuals into an online mob.
+
+That's unusual.  And it's really, really bad.
+
+Also as usual - it got worse.  QAnon came after gamergate and has done more damage because the "target" isn't women in gaming, it's the deep state.  It's every celebrity.  It's the man behind the man behind the thrown ([RTJ lyric](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg0byaqVaXo)).  It's "bad" law enforcement officials... it's all of "them".
+
+We simply don't have time to define all of what QAnon is[^3], but it's behind a lot more of the extreme violence we see in America.  That's because it orbits close to extremely strong worldviews, like hundreds of thousands of children a year in The States go missing because they are being sacrificed to Satan (who is real) so that politicians can have sex with them (which they definitely do[^7]) and then sacrifice them so they can stay young forever (which they are).  I think it's cool that QAnon have settled theological debates and proved the existence of Satan,  and then based a worldview around it that *isn't* Satanism.  I'd expect them to run with that as their headline.
+
+You can find QAnon roots in anti-vax arguments during the COVID pandemic, in anti-democracy and far-right protests.  In recent years the severity of these beliefs has reached the conclusion that we must actively destabilise economies and democracies because those are the only thing strong enough to cover up the truth (Satan, blood sacrifice, etc.).  
+
+At the core of Ball's argument is that 4chan is like a breeding ground for virus-like ideas.  A metaphor I'm not sure he would have come to had he published the book in 2019.  He argues that some of the basic components of 4chan, namely a lack of username or any identifying information and the transient nature of posts (they disappear if they're not getting as much engagement as their peers).
+
+We're left with a situation where anyone (bots, state actors, content farms) can claim to be anyone (concerned citizens), and where only the most engaging threads hang around.  So when you visit, what are you more likely to see?
+
+He details the way that content then evolves more as it leaves 4chan and makes its way to private chats and servers.  A "crunchy granola moms" group spins it as health mistrust; a mens rights group spins it as misogyny or attacks on liberty and dignity for men; content creators spin it as reaction videos...
+
+The result is people committing real world crimes, often in america (like pizzagate in the States; [Britannica](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pizzagate)) - but also reaching other countries (e.g. Australia; [the Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/dec/15/sovereign-citizen-pseudolaw-family-court-dangerous-ideology-custody-disputes-ntwnfb)).
+
+The virus analogy, though perhaps overtired in recent years, turns out to be quite apt here.  Ball shows us how the spread, evolution, and transformation of QAnon-related beliefs outside of the breeding ground of 4chan have a legitimising effect, with a process that looks a lot like selective evolution.
+
+It's a brief book, and we certainly don't get a lot of suggestions for what we can do to make things better.  Mis- and disinformation are on the rise, and it's having real-world impacts.  It is famously widening the Overton window, and creating pipelines from seemingly innocuous "health-conscious" beliefs to far-right ideology[^4].  These changes to public sentiment are things we should be aware of.  In my opinion mostly because they're unintended consequences of the platforms themselves.  4chan, FaceBook, Telegram, weren't created with the idea that they'd allow people to self-radicalise based on untrue and malicious content, but it's happening.
+
+The book tells us that our instinctual notion for better fact-check and platform moderation simply won't work in the face of the problem.  Their effects are transient or moderate[^5], and that's probably something you can instinctively feel to be true.  It's not quite as simple as just giving people the right information.
+
+Here again, I felt the missing voice.  Of people who have been deprogrammed or deradicalised from these points.  Those people *do* exist[^6] and without it, the discussion around solutions felt a little too detached, and a bit forlorn.  
+
+Notably, the book doesn't present itself as policy advice for governments or platforms.  Likely because that's a whole *thing*.  But I do think it's a shame to introduce a problem so undefinable and so bad as "people online are convincing themselves the government is sacrificing children to Satan", but then doesn't go "and here's how those people can be reached and helped".
+
+Read the book, 4⭐/5.
+
+---
+
+[^1]: Exactly how the far right has managed to achieve mainstream political and cultural power in the last decade, using trans people as boogeyman to scare voters and the public, I leave it to the reader to decide.  It's also worth noting that it's not *just* trans boogeymen (boogeythems?) being invoked by this previous marginalised community - but it *is* interesting.
+
+[^2]: an industry larger than music and film combined, by annual revenue ([Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesagencycouncil/2023/11/17/the-gaming-industry-a-behemoth-with-unprecedented-global-reach/))
+
+[^3]: Not least because it's not really a single "thing"
+
+[^4]: There are two YouTube videos I recommend here (neither less than 90 minutes).  The first is Matt Bernstein's "The Crunchy to Far Right pipeline" ([YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR7VsBfyqA8)) with Derek Beres of the Conspiruality podcast.  The second is Contrapoint's "Conspiracy" video essay ([YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teqkK0RLNkI))
+
+[^5]: Though in my own very brief research following the crumbs laid down by Ball, the evidence here does appear to be mixed (e.g. "Factual corrections: Concerns and current evidence"; [link](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352250X23001604)).  I worry that we look at corrections of misinformation during 2020-2021 and forget just how often, and severely, policy and health advice was changing.  It makes for a very uncontrolled environment, and I reckon the vast majority of people felt had to confront pretty big ideas about truth, trust, fairness, and society.  I think it's an interesting time to study for that very reason, but I worry about generalising findings outside of a novel, evolving global health crisis.
+
+[^6]: One of them co-hosts the Some Dare Call It Conspiracy podcast ([link](https://www.somedarecallitconspiracy.com/))
+
+[^7]: For extreme clarity: that is satire.