ALT: Ellen Joe: Zenless Zone Zero Reveal

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_**The Magician**_ _Greysmoke Rising (Book 1)_ Mabel Ramona FurPlanet Productions December 2025 Print Edition $19.95 Ebook Edition $9.95 Joe Greysbell is, at the start of _Greysmoke Rising,_ approaching forty, stuck in a dead-end call center job, daydreaming about Heroes he obsessively follows—particularly Ellen “Lawful Neutral” Foxpaw—and about being a woman. In the first chapter, his attempt to buy pretty nail polish, to play a bit with gender presentation, goes dangerously awry thanks to a swaggering, bigoted Texas cop; Joe only escapes due to the mere luck of an all-units summons calling the rooster away. This isn’t an unfamiliar start to a new Korps Universe series, but Joe stands out for how “real world” his circumstance and troubles are: he’s not an aspiring hero, has no powers, and barely has any dreams left to dash. His inner voice is one of self-hatred, constant belittlement and denial. What little fun he has comes from participating in online forums and games, including “HeroClash,” a superhero-vs.-supervillain fighting game that uses heroes and villains from the real world, including Lawful Neutral and her frequent nemesis Redline. If you’ve read Induction and Realignment, you know both these names well, and that while Volta has thoroughly embraced her hero-to-villain transition, Ellen is having difficulty reconciling everything she thought she knew about the Korps with the reality of her new life. Joe—or “JosCat” online—already has conflicting thoughts about the Korps; his online friends are mostly queer or queer-positive, he’s admitting to himself that Redline is _really_ attractive, and rumors say that his idol Ellen has just switched sides. One night, he goes down the rabbit hole of pro-Korps conspiracy theories online—naturally, there’s a subreddit for tats—and finds an essay from the pseudonymous “V” that begins, “Before I had ROSE to help, I was going to die.” This leads Joe/Jos to the mysterious Thorntech, and to order a pair of the augmented reality visors that feature ROSE as an AI companion. When the visors arrive, Rose promptly susses out Jos’s gender dysphoria and sets about helping, even putting her in touch with “V”, indirectly. Lest this simply become a recap, I won’t give a play-by-play of how Josryne finds herself, like Ellen, rescued by the Korps and re-discovers herself as Mabel Greysmoke, the titular magician. Ellen and Volta become major characters as the story progresses, and Rose—who other stories have suggested but this one confirms is part of the “Karen swarm,” the silver dragon(s) who speak for the Korps’ Overlord—plays more than a supporting part. While Mabel Greysmoke is on a similar journey of self-discovery as Volta’s in _Induction_ and Slate’s in Dissolution, this isn’t an action-driven story, and the slice-of-life vibe is closer to the second half of _Realignment._ If there’s an antagonist in the tale, it may well be Mabel herself: she’s plagued by self-doubt and insecurity coupled with impatience and a desperate need to prove she’s worthy of the attention, support, and love she’s receiving, to the point where she puts her newfound relationships in peril. The (satisfying) ending scene both brings the story back full circle and implies future entanglements with the corrupt police, and several mysterious interludes offer strong hints of there being more to Mabel’s developing magic power than she knows. But those are for her future, remaining unexplained at the novel’s end. As much as I’d like to see more machinations and grand plots pitting the villains against the rarely-heroic heroes of this world, this is an origin story—and while there’s some wild and inventive magic elements, it remains extremely real and relatable. I suspect more than a few readers will feel extremely seen, and what makes Mabel frustrating is what makes her compelling and relatable. (And, yes, given that Mabel-the-character shares a name with Mabel-the-author, it seems safe to assume real-life experience is being drawn on.) This is one of the longer books in the Korps Universe, but as some other readers have noted, it doesn’t _feel_ long, and despite being slice-of-life it’s still propulsive. And, as with the other Korps stories, these are characters you just want to hang with and read more about. While I wouldn’t choose _The Magician_ as an introduction to the KU, if you’ve enjoyed any of the previous books, this is a great addition to the corpus. I’m looking forward to more of Mabel’s journey.

Vanishing Acts - Kindle edition by Datlow, Ellen, Abraham, Daniel, Bell, M. Shayne, Cadnum, Michael, Chiang, Ted, Davidson, Avram, Fowler, Karen Joy, Haldeman, Joe, McAuley, Paul, McDowell, Ian, Morlan, A. R., Schow, David J., Shunn, William, Stableford, Brian M., Tiedemann, Mark W., McAllister, Bruce, Charnas, Suzy McKee. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Vanishing Acts.

Plot Ellen Martin and her husband Joe are on a pleasure boat ride, in New York when it capsises and sinks. 21 people drown, including Joe, and one of their friends. When Ellen attempts to get compensation from the company she is met with roadblock after roadblock due to insurance companies, trust companies, shell companies and more. Her investigations grow, and it might just lead her to Mossack-Fonseca, a large law firm that is under investigations from the IRS. Direction Steven Soderbergh directs, and like usual gives an okay performance behind he camera.

ALT: Ellen Joe Zzz

ALT: Ellen Joe: Zenless Zone Zero Reveal

ALT: Ellen Joe Zzz

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