Cwej is a series I've already dipped my toes into, in the form of prequel Requiem, billed as a retroactively-written entry point to the series. In my review, I found the book to be rather lacking, mostly boiling down to the fact that it wasn't a story meant to be told as a Cwej book. Truth be told, I've been plagued by a certain guilt since – on one hand, I very much value honesty in my reviews, and on the other, I know well that Arcbeatle Press is a small independent publisher that needs all the attention it can get – and several of whose writers I've had the pleasure of meeting and even befriending firsthand.
Which is why I'm very glad to say I like the series' initial installment, Down the Middle, as much as I do.
Down the Middle is a lengthy, frenzied anthology featuring twenty-one short stories, contributed by sixteen authors with a wide range of styles. My understanding is that no pitches were rejected in the making of this anthology, resulting in a truly wild ride. Out of series editor Hunter O'Connell's passion for an obscure Doctor Who EU character from the 90s came a bumpy but heartfelt celebration of all things Chris Cwej, and upon understanding that vision, I'm not sure I'd have it any other way.
The anthology gets off to an intriguing but messy start with the first story, "A Bright White Crack", in which our protagonist Chris Cwej is plunged into an alternate universe and meets a couple of very regretful terrorists (Larles and Kwol) who've just destroyed that universe's Earth. He spends a couple of years with them helping them save the surviving humans, over the course of which they bond and come to understand each other's bad and good sides both – and at the end, Lady Aesculapius swoops in as part of a surprise crossover with Arcbeatle's 10,000 Dawns series, and brings the three back to Cwej's home universe. Cwej's task now is to rehabilitate Larles and Kwol while simultaneously going on missions around the universe and keeping them hidden from his employers, the Superiors. And so, our series begins.
There are a lot of things that really work here – the morally-muddled Cwej teaming up with people who've done horrible things and want to learn how to make up for it is a concept full of promise, and there's some nice prose in here besides. At the same time, the story's pretty rapid-fire and cluttered with its ideas, trying to serve as an introduction to a lot of things at once while also bringing in big concepts that won't really be relevant later such as interdimensional travel and Aesc. It's also a strange choice to so quickly introduce and resolve the conflict yet skip over most of the latter, making the whole thing feel a bit rushed, especially when these are characters whose dynamic will be important to the anthology going forward. We've just missed two years of their getting to know each other! I would rather they hadn't been able to save alt-Earth, strengthening their motivation to do good as the book went on, or alternatively, I would have them be friends with Cwej since before the book started; the middle ground parses rather oddly. I would love a novella or somesuch about those two years spent saving alt-Earth!
Still, it's a good foundation for the story onwards. The next few stories have a range of tones: we start with the melancholy "Fountain of Youth" and the light-hearted but cleverly introspective "Flickering Flame" (written by Chris Cwej's creator Andy Lane himself, and feat. Doctor Who EU icon Iris Wildthyme!). Right afterwards, we jump to the much-wackier "Infinity" and "Judy Collins vs Christopher Cwej" – I wasn't really able to tune into these two, though I see their appeal in spades.
None of these stories are going to give you a great vision of Cwej: The Series' identity, because they're all so distinct from each other. In the same vein, these stories struggle to characterize our Cwejjy protagonist too strongly – but they're worthwhile reads on their own accord. The tonal variation continues with "In the Loop", but here other aspects of the series' identity start to coalesce. Here is where, in my mind, the anthology really kicks off, as Cwej encounters a defector from the cloned Cwejen army, grapples with the morality of being a space cop, and Larles and Kwol finally see some action after being sidelined for a few stories. It's wonderfully timey-wimey and touching, weaving in the character and worldbuilding work I was waiting for while giving it great emotional and thematic weight. No wonder it's so tight, too – it's written by James Wylder, an author whose prose I've come to love after reading their stories here and elsewhere.
(I'll put in a side-note here to say I also very much enjoyed "Hearts of Gold", which did wonders for Cwej's characterization – unfortunately Arcbeatle had to cut ties with multiple people central to its creation, resulting in the removal of the story from later printings of Down the Middle. I don't begrudge Arcbeatle one bit; to put it lightly, all signs point to those choices being justified, but it's nevertheless a shame the story itself had to go.)
The next few stories after "Loop" are pretty fun. Noted Faction Paradox author Simon Bucher-Jones puts in some great work on "The Weasels and the Warpfield" and "When I Remember __________", the former a joyfully silly story and the latter a nice rumination on artistic identity. I also quite liked "Ring Theory", a story about a spaceship of endless rooms that has some nice plural representation and gives our main trio some good characterization. I especially enjoyed the use of a tortured Cwejen as the villain, lending some depth to proceedings that perhaps foreshadows later events in the anthology...!
After a few more entries that worked but didn't personally speak to me (although shoutout to the one story that spends four pages straight just listing differently-numbered Cwej clones), the anthology kicks into high gear for the climax. "The Eternal" is a wonderful and emotional atmospheric piece that really brings its setting to life and has Cwej make some hard choices once more, another example of what I was hoping for most of all from this anthology – and "The Ursine Brood" is similar but with a hundred times the trauma of anything this book has contained so far. ('S great, though.) After that is a short but very sweet piece about Chris dealing with said trauma via a placebo – a nice acknowledgement of Chris's puppy-dog energy – and then things get really real.
Throughout the anthology up until this point, one of my biggest complaints is that stories that grapple with the muddled morality of its main characters are largely the exception. Most stories have Cwej (and sometimes Larles and Kwol) go somewhere, solve a problem, and go home satisfied, in typical Doctor Who spinoff fashion. "The PsyCon Prediction" breaks all that down, where Cwej finally realizes he's been trying to be the Doctor all along, but never could be – suddenly everything clicks into place, why the anthology up until now has felt as if it's trying to wear the shoes of Doctor Who but always shifted a little to the left, sidelining the "companion" characters and never quite finding its own identity. It all clicks into place, and after spending so long seeing what both Cwej the character and Cwej the series were going for, it all shatters to bits in spectacular fashion. Kwol sees what they think is a vision of humanity conquering the universe, tries to kill Cwej, and Cwej instinctively hits them with a lethal gun-blast. God it hurts so bad.
And suddenly we're reminded everybody here has done awful things, and Cwej has to face the consequences of his actions. Larles spurns him and turns to the side of his Superiors, he's put on trial and shoots the Superior president, and a whole revolution led by his clones begins. He tries to escape from it all in a section of that had me nearly tearing up, before being shown cold, hard reality by Larles in "The Aftermath", then confronting his past selves in "The V Cwejes" (a story that didn't quite make sense to me, but whose ethereal atmosphere made it all worth it).
Finally Cwej has to confront firsthand that he's part of a clone race and all the horrors that entails, something he's been doing sporadically in the anthology's best entries but which comes to a head here. His cloned brethren, the Cwejen, wreak havoc on the universe, and the lengthy "Rebel Rebel" sees him confronting that, teamed up with Christina (a transgender Cwejen!) and her partner Frey. This is a massive, cosmic story with a very smart structure, sticking to one planet for most of it but nevertheless showing refugees of the Cwejen Uprising and sprinkling in some lovely vignettes throughout to show other fragments of Uprising-related events happening in parallel.
Confronting versions of himself, ones that help and harm and do both, Cwej compares and contrasts himself to Cwejen across the universe – and ultimately forgives himself. He's able to stop the Uprising, and knows there's hurt that's been caused and rebuilding to be done after such a violent and cosmic event. When given the opportunity, though, to completely undo all that happened, he merges the pre- and post-Uprising universes. Some good came from the horrors, but they were indeed horrors, and so Cwej splits the universe down the middle. He'll never be free of his own sins, but that's okay as long as he understands both the bad and the good things he's wrought upon the world, and tries to heal the damage. And from here on out, that's his new goal – no more doing the Superiors' dirty work. Even Larles and Kwol, characters who felt rather sidelined for most of the book, get resolutions that really reflect this. Kwol is resurrected with all their memories, but brushes it off – I have the sense that will come back later, while Cwej is now teamed up with with Larles-es from two timelines, and the post-Uprising version still can't stand the guy but who is obliged to work with him. I love all the parallels and symbolism here; the entire climax and resolution is a wonderful summation of Cwej's relationship with his clones throughout the book, seeing all facets of himself reflected in these strange funhouse mirrors of black and white and gray.
And so concludes an anthology whose story seems to mirror that of its creation. Reading the book, one gets the impression that Cwej: The Series didn't quite know what it was at the start of Down the Middle. It tried on various tones and themes, at times playing with its identity as a Doctor Who spinoff and other times going for something completely different, whether that be wild and wacky or lonely and traumatic. Cwej experiences the full range of human emotion in this book, never quite being sure who he is or what his purpose should be. Just as Cwej navigates his feelings about himself (for multiple intersecting meanings of "himself"), the anthology takes the reader across a massive variety of places, times, writing styles, authors, and tones, even a multitude of ways to approach and dissect its lead – until at last, in its final few stories, it settles down and finds itself just in time for a rip-roaring and emotional finale. This is the most "first installment"-y first installment I've ever read, and that's part of the fun.
Down the Middle is not a perfect book. For however many things that work, there's a couple things that don't; for every story that hit the bullseye there was one I didn't dislike but rather just couldn't mesh with. But that doesn't matter; the important thing here is that this is exactly the kind of book I want to create, ups and downs both. Chaotic, messy, filled with sheer passion for art (and for the character of Chris Cwej, natch), Down the Middle is six-hundred whole pages of throwing things at the wall out of love alone, and waiting 'til later to see what sticks.
I can't help but admire that.
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