The Week in Review – April 12, 2025

It's always with a sense of immense relief whenever I finish up a massively intense deadline – like the past three or so weeks have been where I had to write alt text on 17 backlist titles for the big publisher in the UK I work for. Of course, invariably, with a job like this, much like the creative process in general, it ends up with the memeworthy "doing all the work while crying".

Anyhoo, I got through it – the largest title taking me more than five hours of describing highly complex bar graphs for the visually impaired. It's ... definitely a skill. But it wasn't all dull stuff. A highlight for me was writing alt text for three Patti Smith books and oh my gosh, why have I never delved deeper into her work? I do believe I'll be purchasing hard copies of these titles – there's something to be said about a creative person who works across multiple disciplines and is still going strong in her latter years. She's a decade younger than my mum. Respect.

I briefly want to talk about the whole thing with the de-extinction of the dire wolves according to the work that Colossal has been doing. On one hand, my inner SF author is absolutely gobsmacked by the science behind this while another part of me has had time to sit back and listen to other opinions. So I have mixed feelings.

These are not dire wolves in the historical sense – it's been pointed out that the animals that died out over 10,000 years ago were not actually related to grey wolves at all, but were closer to dholes. All Colossal has done is mod the genes so that they have larger, edited grey wolves that share traits with dire wolves. No actual dire wolf genes were spliced and diced, but rather certain genes were nudged in the modified grey wolf DNA (at least that's how I understand it and am trying to explain it in plain English).

But evolution is a weird thing. Case in point is the Aldabra rail – a fascinating story of how the form of the animal was so well suited to the environment that under similar circumstances the same creature evolved after the first iteration went extinct. And let's look at parallel evolution. We have porcupines in the Americas and Africa, but they are not closely related, even if they are both rodents. They both have quills, however. 

If these hypothetical dire "wolves" can occupy the same ecological niche the original ones did, then they will have similar form and function, so in a sense do behave as the dire wolves should. Nu-dire wolves, anyone? Not that there's much in the way of megafauna for them to hunt these days.

I've seen people saying we should rather protect the species that we already have, and that to have these 'de-extincted' beasts running around is unethical since we can barely manage the vulnerable or critically endangered ones we already have. And yes, I totally see their point.

Yet it is also my hope that the work being done can be applied to helping restore species that are under significant pressure. Or nudging along programmes such as The Quagga Project that has already done a much gentler job of de-exctinction for the quagga. The current generation of Rau-quagga, as they're called, are really starting to look the part.

I do, however, have a great fear that we're going to see many more 'designer' exotic animals created for wealthy billionaires who don't have anything better to do with their fancy yacht money. Le sigh.

Anyhoo.

On to books.

Mini review

I just read Knee-Deep in Cinders by Ashley Capes, an author I've reviewed before, and I'm happy to say that I enjoyed this book even more than his first, that I read a million years ago, it feels like. In this one, we meet Vilas, who's the endling of his people, who were brutally murdered and used for magic potions by a conquering race, due to magical properties in their bodies – primarily their immortality. Vilas is now kept under lock and key, collared so that he cannot access his magic, and he vows that one day he will break free and wreak vengeance on the city of Onath. Yet when an existential threat looms, Vilas may very well be the only one who can save the city he has vowed to destroy. 

Capes offers well-written, action- and intrigue-packed adventure fantasy set in a well-realised world populated by a broad cast of characters. This is very much the type of story that carries me away so that I forget that I'm reading and get swept up in the action, with some nicely executed descriptions as well. I know that with his previous book I felt that there were moments where characters acted without sufficient motivation and I'm pleased to see that this time, he's gone deeper, with a far stronger-realised setting and characters. A solid read, and one that I recommend.