A Comprehensive Analysis of “Shin” Nemesis (2023)

Story Overview

Our story begins in the house of our protagonist, NSO Agent Spider Graham. Yes, you read that right, his birth name is “Spider”. Apparently his mom liked spiders but I have no idea why she named him that, but I think he’s cool either way. A grizzled man in his late forties, he reminds me of Hank Anderson from Detroit Become Human, from his grey hair, to his looks, hell I even imagined Clancy Brown voicing him. I learned this not too long ago but apparently Graham’s name and supposed likeness is based on a real person in Jeremy Robinson’s Facebook group the TRIBE. Life imitating art I suppose. We see how a gruff person like him has a heart, in spite of his position as an Agent of the Nemesis Special Operations or NSO, like as he helps a bug out of his kitchen sink instead of flushing it down the drain. While that does show his better nature Graham is still an old grumpy man who would probably yell at the neighborhood kids to “get off my lawn” if his new partner hadn’t arrived at his house. 

She shows up early at his house in a sporty looking thing, meaning this kid has money to spend. However it’s not so much being early and Graham dragging his feet. See, it’s been over 13 years since the first Nemesis attack in Boston and things have changed. Crime is at an ultimate low thanks to Nemesis having the ability to hunt someone down anywhere in the world and kill vast amounts of people in the process. And thankfully while almost everyone on earth has clued in to play nice or they’ll be a Lunchables for a kaiju goddess, the key word is almost, there are still people who lose it and hurt people as a result. And so, following the events of Boston, our heroes at Fusion Center-P have evolved to the Nemesis Special Operations or NSO. 

After some banter between the two, he reluctantly goes with her, where the two banter some more. I love the exchanges between these two, Graham might be a grizzly dick at times with a mouth, but the partner doesn’t take his BS and matches him beat for beat. It’s also here that we discover who this new partner, fresh out of the academy and on her first real Extraction, really is. Graham, after being referred to by his last name, says he prefers people call him by his first name instead. When asked what kind of a name is Spider, he retorts by asking her what kind of a name is Maigo… you read that right, readers. Graham’s extraction partner is none other than our Lost Child herself, Maigo Tilly, surviving to adulthood in this continuity.

Let’s get this out of the way here, there are going to be a lot of people being pedantic with her being alive means this story technically cannot happen. It’s easy to see why. Without her death it means her DNA would have never been donated to BioLance and helped in giving General Gordon his heart or contribute in the creation of Nemesis, thus never becoming Nemesis in the first place and thus the story cannot happen. However, I’d say it’s missing the bigger picture, the forest for the trees. Just because Maigo isn’t Nemesis doesn’t necessarily mean Nemesis still can’t happen. This is the exact thing kaiju movies have been doing for over 70 years; the ability to take an existing monster and give them a new backstory, look, powers, etc. Just look at all the Godzilla movies, particularly the Millennium and the period between then and Reiwa, how many versions of Godzilla has there been with different appearances and origins. You can switch things around and still make it iconic. 

The same can apply for Nemesis. We’ll never know exactly what happened in the first days of Nemesis’s first rampage, however through the description it’s revealed that events played out similarly to what happened in Project Nemesis. Nemesis was still born in a lab, however it’s implied everyone, including (or more presumably) Gordon, had been all killed by her but events are a little muddy. I guess it should be expected, it’s so the book doesn’t get bogged down with backstory, but if you ask me there is an opportunity here that was sorely missed but we’ll get to that later. So the bottom line here is this Nemesis isn’t quite exactly the same as the Nemesis we know, so it’s likely safe to say that this one is a straight up clone of Nemesis Prime instead of a hybrid like in the main continuity. 

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention our favorite Beanie wearing hero. Jon Hudson is not really in this book, instead having died in one of Nemesis’s rampages before the events of the book. Which is sad, but at the same time it offers a new perspective from a new cast of characters. He’s forever immortalized as a hero with a statue in the central square of the city of Neo-Boston…pro tip, never call your city “neo” anything. I don’t know why, but I cringe whenever I hear the term “neo” in anything fictional, especially in existing cities. Works better for a futuristic cyberpunk dystopia city, but I wouldn’t call this book cyberpunk despite what we’ll be seeing soon. At least in this universe, they bothered to rebuild Boston after the first attack. I don’t recall them rebuilding it in the main universe, but whatever.

So what is this Extraction thing about? Basically after Nemesis’s coming out, the government has given in and decided to give every criminal they have to Nemesis as a bunch of snackables. With as little crime as there had been, those who do commit offenses of any kind are summarily rounded up and taken to the Altar in Neo-Boston and spoon fed to the kaiju. Naturally no one wants to be eaten alive, and would sometimes run for the hills, and that leads to the Extraction Agents being something of executioners. They don’t even get due process, they are guilty by default of Nemesis swimming up the coast and coming after you like a demonic version of Santa Claus.

As Graham and Maigo arrive at the neighborhood where this latest perpetrator lives, the form tries to make small talk with the perimeter officers who make sure no one escapes. The job is simple: go in, get out. In the book they describe the consequences of missing a target when one man who made necklaces out of women’s teeth and Nemesis literally cut a path of destruction from the Persian Gulf to Tehran. So yeah…they don’t mess around. Maigo drives up to the apartment residence of Frankie Robles, the killer in question. They get in contact with Ryan Owens, a sort of Tendo Choi type character who handles all of the technical stuff and acts as the eyes and ears of the operations involved in Extractions. We quickly find out that Graham hates his guts for seemingly no reason other than he’s Graham and just hates everyone equally. Unfortunately for them Nemesis is on her way and she’s hauling ass. Whatever this Robles guy did (which we’ll soon see) has pissed Nemesis off pretty good, considering her speed is a 9.5 on the Hudson Scale, which much like the Serizawa Scale, determines the severity of the crime you committed. 

They have less than ten hours to get him or face widespread Hell on Earth. Graham believes he’s either in his den of evil instead of making breakfast upstairs, especially for someone who Nemesis wants this badly. Maigo says he didn’t even look and that they should follow protocol but he says to go by the gut feeling regardless. They walk up to the front door, and use an auto-key device that unlocks doors instead of knocking and Graham bickers with Maigo some more. I love these two interactions showing a very contacting duo. Maigo is more peppy and by the books, while Graham is a jerk who’s retiring soon and doesn’t give two kaiju craps about anyone. But it’s something that catches Graham’s attention when he tells her it’s her last chance for normalcy but she says normal was taken from her a long time ago.

They quickly enter and find the place noting its way too tidy and practically deserted making them fear he’s gotten wise and fled. But soon they are in fact not alone, four people, a man, a woman, two kids, enjoying a nice meal…and find that they are more human manikins than living people. Think Norman Bates’s mother but not as grotesque. Frankie Robles, as Maigo deduces, took them while they were asleep and then dunk them in epoxy and suffocated them. Graham concludes that the entire place is filled with bodies just like this, frozen in time. I gotta say this is messed up. Graham says this isn’t the first time he’s avoided the big girl’s attention and so has been digging in the basement to hide himself and his freaky work. 

To make matters worse Robles has cameras all over the place meaning he knows they are there and has likely escaped. Graham says screw subtlety, and kicks down the door to the basement under the stairs. Going down they find more of his manikin victims and there are dozens more. They marvel at how they haven’t caught this guy or set off Nemesis, until they find a tunnel in a storage cabinet. It’s meticulously hand carved, with electrical cables running along the wall. Graham follows it down to a granite cavern and galleries more of these human pieces in various activities you could probably imagine. Graham is about to move past when he sees a few statues of orange eyes demons with dark skin in the vein of Nemesis but these things are purely evil which Nemesis is not. They find a smear of glitter and frosting and realize Franky wasn’t alone down here and had a party. After declaring the place to be clear and barge into another room and find what appears to be a security room with multiple monitors connected to the camera system, meaning Franky knew about them coming for him long before they even stepped foot on the premises. 

So that’s not good.

Graham calls for an update but they’re too far underground to get a single until they see the boxer mannequin blink when he clearly shouldn’t, and the door swings close. Before Graham could say a word after discovering the boxer was hollowed out, Maigo is hot on his heels after him. By time he gets to the first floor of the house he radios in to tell Owens there has been a breach of protocol and they need to ‘release the hounds’. Owens is more excited than what should be expected, but shockingly Graham is way more worried for Maigo. Not just her general safety but also her reputation, with this being her first Extraction and already Franky is in the wind. He requests airborne pick-up and it’s here we continue a long standing Nemesis tradition. We have Truck Betty, Helicopter Betty, Spaceship Betty and now introducing the official A.I. Betty or Drone Betty.

Drone Betty is, as the name suggests, a translucent drone with artificial intelligence created by NSO to assist agents in extracting a target without alerting them or others of their presence. Drone Betty can also adapt to her pilot’s personality and thinking methodology to better adapt to the situation. Very cool but gives you goosebumps considering she’s artificial. Thankfully, as the description pointed out, she won’t go Skynet or Venjix on everyone…which come to think of it would be cool if a kaiju fought an AI. One of the old unused Heisei Era scripts for Godzilla had him fight an Artificial Intelligence. 

Anyway to make a long chase scene short, both Graham and Maigo, who pursued him with her car, caught Frankie Robles in an abandoned house that connected to his other place via tunnel, discovering he is a member of Divine Retribution. Divine Retribution is a cult who worships Nemesis, having been around since her first appearance. I gotta say this is a refreshing thing for a kaiju genre, you don’t really see cults worshipping kaiju like this, save for the Exif in the Anime Trilogy. It honestly surprises me that we never got that in the original Saga. You’d think a giant monster being perceived as a literal God would have shrines dedicated to it, or extremist groups with their own twisted version of the God they worship. Divine Retribution isn’t exactly an extremist cult, per say but I can assure you they are involved with something big.

Bring Maigo along, Graham escorts Frankie Robles and we get a clear idea of how deranged this guy is and that’s putting it lightly. He gives me vibes of Cletus Kasady from the second Venom movie, especially his nihilistic rambling. But he says something particularly interesting about Maigo, saying she’ll be welcomed with open and judge the world…as she judged her father. We’ll get back to this real soon. Unfortunately getting Frankie to the Altar is not as secretive as they’d hoped, as news media choppers have started to swarm around the city in hopes to see Nemesis and that the Nemesisters have also arrived en masse. The Nemesisters are an all-female biker group who worship Nemesis as well but not as zealots, they’re more or less freelance peacekeeping agents who are more or less pains on the butt for the NSO. I’ll admit while we don’t see that many of them besides the leader and a few members, they are a pretty cool and unique concept that should be explored in a future novel if possible. It’s different than what we’d normally see in kaiju media, an all-female gang devoted to a female kaiju but is not self-destructive like a cult. Kinda reminds me of the Shobijin and Mothra, minus the telepathic connection.

Anyway, we land on the Altar’s roof and immediately Maigo wants to puke her entire everything out because of just how nasty it is. The stench of blood, guts and Nemesis drool over the years hits her like a brick wall being used for baseball. Doesn’t bother Graham though. Makes you wonder what cleaning chemicals the NSO uses because it’s honestly not enough. As she regains her composure, she asks what Frankie’s last words are before he’s a lunchable and in the middle of saying something Graham yanks him out of the cage and he falls on the concrete. As he pulls him back up on his feet, Graham asks if he’s going to try and fight but he says he doesn’t. Maigo takes him and dead-man walks him across the pinnacle to the pole, basically a sacrificial totem where Frankie is chained up like he’s Andromeda from Clash of the Titans. Guess who’s the Kraken in this situation. 

After hooking him up, they wait for Nemesis to arrive, she’s still a few hours away. While Frankie braves the elements, although against his will, Maigo and Graham wait it out in a watch tower. Maigo’s obviously tense, probably nervous about seeing Nemesis but Graham thinks it’s what was said about her father that’s really bothering her. Despite being a snarky old fart, who flips off everyone and anyone who even looks at him, he is worried about his partner. When asked, she plays it off as his brooding personality is rubbing off on her but he doesn’t buy it. And this is a point where, as a storyteller, I was taken aback by the presentation. When a character typically reveals their sad backstory it’s near the end, somewhere around the middle. Not always the case, especially for Robinson’s books where you get surprising moments not typically found in other books. But here, I was so surprised at how he did it. I had actually talked to a few of my writing buddies about the appropriate time to reveal, and the general consensus amongst my peers was it was up to the author to reveal when and what they wanted. Kudos to Robinson for exceeding my expectations!

It’s here we enter Maigo’s story. It’s mostly what happened in the original Saga, Maigo’s killer, her father, still murders his wife for suspicion of cheating on him, and it turns out he was even more of a dick than we remembered him, and Maigo got home earlier than she should’ve, and her dad tries to killer. However, in this series of events, Mr. Tilly didn’t have the gun with him or knew where it was, but Maigo knew and used it on her father. Officially it was a murder-suicide to protect Maigo’s identity as the shooter due to her status as a minor, but all of that would be old news because the next day Nemesis attacks Boston, as opposed to two weeks like in the first books. It’s then that Graham realizes that the watchtower and subsequently the Altar is built on top of her old apartment building. They are actually standing where her bedroom used to be. Graham’s heart breaks for her and I do not blame him. Unfortunately, there’s more. 

On the day Nemesis attacked, she had run away from the people looking after her and went to the penthouse, still bloody from yesterday. After heading to the roof, where her mother had taken her whenever her dad’s friend were around (you can guess why), she sees everything from the same vantage point they are on right now. People getting eaten, crushed, and burned alive. Unfortunately, this time Hudson didn’t come flying down from Helicopter Betty, but Maigo meets Nemesis face to face and doesn’t kill her. Maigo likens them as kindred spirits, she has no idea how true that is. So, on top of being the sole survivor of a family, one half tried to kill her, and having been the one to shoot her father and had lived through the absolute devastation of a kaiju goddess, I hate to say it people but this is probably the darker version of Maigo’s story. And yes, that includes a story where a little girl is shot and killed by her father and who’s DNA was used in the creation of a bloodthirsty monster.

With Nemesis five miles out, Maigo regains her composure. They see the mound of water rising as she slowly arrives and like the worst timing ever the Nemesisters infiltrate the watchtower and to an extent the Altar with a force of three hundred. Graham, not wanting to cause Nemesis to go over the edge, orders Owens to let them in with open arms to avoid conflict at all costs. It’s a smart move too because Nemesis can sense emotional disorder and strife and anything close to open bloodshed and she’s not gonna be happy. But he’s still going to mean business as he tells Maigo to be ready if things go sideways stupid style. However, he notices that Frankie is saying something but he can’t hear it so he gets Owens to record it on the security camera. And it’s here we meet the leader of the Nemesisters, an Amazonian beauty named Claire Blackwater, who’s also Native American thanks to the approaching glow of Nemesis’s membranes. She knows who Graham is, even addressing him by first name. Before we can find out why she and her merry maidens had stormed the building, Nemesis has arrived in full, Graham giving Maigo and Blackwater sound blocking earmuffs. 

And it’s finally time to talk about Shin Nemesis’s brand new Reiwa loom after almost ten pages of talking about anything but Nemesis. Yeah, she doesn’t have that much of a presence in this than her previous books. That’s not a bad thing but we’ll discuss that in a bit. The look for Nemesis is pretty dang good, it’s a lot slimmer then her Heisei version, with the addition of more Membranes running along her arms and legs, very reminiscent of her fifth form just without the wings. Her trident tail is replaced with a more hooked blade at the end with more smaller spikes on her head, orange glowing eyes and if you look closer at the artwork, you can see small bottom tusks like Gamera’s. Her head in particular reminds me of the third form of Beast the One, Reputiria, from Ultraman the Next. If the description is anything to go by, she also has tendrils running along her jaw, but the artwork doesn’t show that. 

Her new design is credited to Zach Cole and Gabe TKezilla, the latter of whom is a well-known kaiju artist and friend of mine and whom I had reached out to talk about his involvement, who were both contacted by Jeremy Robinson to come up with the new look. Gabe had been given the task of designing a brand-new Nemesis look for the book with the only instructions being to make her Xenomorph thin and reminiscent of the Xenomorph from Alien itself. While still keeping with the original design to make it recognizable, Robinson gave him almost free reign to come up with whatever he wanted with some of his concepts leaning towards the Eldritch and Lovecraftian. However, he decided to go with this simpler look to keep with what we classify as Nemesis before it could be finalized by our favorite Kaiju artist Matt Frank.

I for one like the new look but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I preferred the old Nemesis look. I don’t know, I guess it’s like comparing Godzilla suits and looks. Everyone has their favorites and preferences for what they consider “their Godzilla”. Same with Nemesis. If anything, it harkens back to many of the old Godzilla films where each movie had a different look, mostly because the suit would either get damaged during filming or it’s brand new for that specific movie. This is no exception. Kaiju, no matter the Era, will look extremely different from when they first appeared, say 70 years ago, but will always be recognizable.

Nemesis rises from the ocean in full display. She’s also a lot taller than Heisei Nemesis, if I remember correctly about 400 feet or 121.92 meters, pretty much bigger than legendary Godzilla. She scans the Altar with her fiery eyes before seeing Frankie and giving him the yum-yum face of justice. Frankie, despite literally crapping himself after Nemesis’s epic roar (Graham explains all the convicts do this and thinks it’s an involuntary thing due to the sound of her roar), is practically delighted to see his living God. And with one bite, she eats him and returns to the sea. As simple as that.

Anyway, after Nemesis’s late-night snack, Graham, Maigo, and Blackwater can finally speak. Blackwater I’d pretty shaken up as is Maigo, the latter of whom has not seen Nemesis in over a decade. But something was off with her like there might be more than one offender. Graham suspects it might be coming from the underground and he asks Owens if he could get everything he could on Divine Retribution and Blackwater. The first part of that request is a little steep, they already have Investigators looking into it and he’s an Extraction Agent. Graham brushes it off and says he’s retiring soon so what’s the worst they can do to him. The trio head down to Graham’s office aka the blind where they can talk in private under the SCIF rules or sensitive compartmented information facility. In short, anything they want to say here, they can say it without worrying about eavesdroppers. Blackwater says the Cultists are planning something big, and it was the Nemesisters who gave a tip about Frankie Robles to the NSO. She doesn’t know exactly what it is, the information is coming from a former cult member who joined her ranks, but whatever it is it’s gonna be tomorrow.

Graham asks, “Why him?”, and she says he gets things done and he’s not afraid to fight dirty if he needs to. She doesn’t know where this place is, but she knows who, her ex-husband Colby Brewer, a son of a gun who resides underground. When old Boston was destroyed, Neo-Boston was built on top of the ruins where the last remnants of crime and debauchery live in hiding of Nemesis, who can only sense sinners if they’re above ground. Blackwater was in an abusive relationship with Brewer until Nemesis showed up and freed her from her torment and started the Nemesisters. Graham agrees to help and they make their first stop at Boston’s underground called Beantown. And if it happens underground, then chances are Brewer knows or has some ties to it, being a sort of big shot down there. If it happened, then he knows about it. We soon see this place and it’s pretty much what you’d expect from a literal criminal underworld with the roughest and toughest living there while every drug, alcohol, and sex work is readily available and exploited. Like something out of Hieronymus Bosch’s nightmares. 

Graham and his newfound team make their way through an abandoned subway system and walk through a sort of marketplace, Blackwater is especially protective of Maigo, who, let’s face it, is a beautiful young lady in a wretched hive of scum and villainy. You must be cautious. Graham on the other hand fits right in according to her. Anyway, they’ll be safe so long as they’re with her, the leader of the Nemesisters has a lot of weight behind it. 

So we meet Brewer in this wild west-inspired saloon that literally says DRINKS on the front, and he is a dick to everyone, chastising Blackwater and being creepy to Maigo. While Graham is at the bar, he had came in first to lower suspicion, he overhears the conversation with Blackwater and Brewer, who’s already threatening to send her back to her bikers in pieces. As he continues to be creepy, she demands to know where the meeting is going to be, but he isn’t budgeting. Graham knows a stalemate when he sees it and gets his drink, paying in currency which is apparently a no-go down here. Man, talk about a society of mole people. What do they use for money down here? Is it a take-what-you-want situation? Anyway, they recognize him as Nemesis’s feeder and try to kick his ass, but he kicks a few of Brewers guys around. One fella even got his fingers broken, so that’s gotta hurt. Maigo secretly chastises him for not going with protocol by defusing the situation but that’s thrown out the door when the guy he broke his fingers tries to kill Graham until he gets shot in the head. Good thing Nemesis doesn’t have a thing in self-defense. After shooting another guy in the leg for not cooperating, Brewer finally tells them where to go. Martha’s Vineyard, a small town on an island off the coast of New Hampshire, is where Divine Retribution will be.

They leave the underground and this is where we have to address one of a few problems with this book. There are a number of perfect opportunities that would have made this book better. Not to say this book is bad, far from it, but I feel that there were a few opportunities that were missed by Robinson. This is one of those missed opportunities. Just imagine a ruined Boston as our setting, in a world where Nemesis has completely ruined most of the world, where the lowest of the low have to fight each other and creepy cultists for survival. Think of something like Godzilla Cataclysm. The underground was a cool idea but this, as well as towards the end, is the only time we see it. Compared to other issues, this one is minor, along with the next problem of the book. If it seems I spend a lot of time on Graham and his team, It’s only because the book was written in solely first person. That’s nothing major, a lot of books are written in the first-person perspective. 

The problem is, it doesn’t give us a lot to explore in this brand-new novel. What about a moment in the book where we see Nemesis’s perspective on things, what her thoughts are in all the sacrificing, does she like it, does she really care about them? Do a scene where the girls have to split off from Graham, Maigo or Blackwater, and have to go rescue random people. That would have emulated the old books and be a nice call back to the style they were written in. I suspect this was done to save Robinson some time and editing, having two styles of writing can be a headache, I’ve tried it myself. On top of that there are still many questions we’ll never get answers to. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just something I keep noticing in my reading. 

So back to the Spider Graham Show, featuring Nemesis, we arrive at Martha’s Vineyard. The team decides to split up, Graham and Maigo will go to the bar while Blackwater, accompanied by her Nemesisters, go around town asking for any leads. After Maigo tricks Graham into going into a gay Irish pub, roll with it, they do find a lead to an old whaling church that was bought up by a strange group a few years ago, machinery coming in and out, but the patrons don’t know what they were doing, only that they congregate every Wednesday. The pair head over, and it looks like a nice enough church, no real evil here. As they enter, we meet the place’s overseer, a chatty lady by the name of Jennifer “Chipmunk” Fisher or Chip or Munk (which this as well as the book preferred calling her). She’s a member of the VPS, the Vineyard Preservation Society.

Her job is pretty much to look after the church, which is not an actual functioning, aside from the Wednesday congregation which she says are all masked up like it’s the Court of Owls. Munk will be the second and last to join Graham’s team in these colossal events. Kinda reminds me of Woodstock from the first book. Her peppy personality does get under Graham’s skin, which comes to a lot of people that get under his skin, but she serves the purpose of showing him and Maigo around. When asked about the basement, she denies it, seemingly trying to direct their attention to the old Vincent House for a mystery. They go over to it and it’s an impressive home, like something a fisherman would live in a few hundred years ago, but has now been converted into a museum. I guess this Vincent guy was either pretty famous, rich or both. Before Munk could go into her spiel Graham interrupts her and asks if the place was constructed with a basement. She says there and takes them to the back to find a steel door. Graham gets Maigo to break it open if she can, much to Munk’s dismay because it’s her job to take care of this place. 

When Munk tries to stop them, Maigo, instead of using force, uses her phone to electronically pries open the door and tells Graham to explain the situation. He does, saying they’re on a mission, but the strangest thing happens. Instead of being scared shitless like the majority of people they’ve told, Munk is ecstatic. She’s a huge fan of the NSO, even wears the T-shirt under her uniform, and she recognizes Graham immediately. I’ve been avoiding this because it’s generally not important, but Graham has a major reputation, not just in the NSO but to most of the world as this badass Agent who takes the bad guys to Nemesis. When asked he says it has its perks, and then the door opens, and they are met with a world of darkness.

This darkness doesn’t last as they trigger motion sensors and activate the lights. And of course they’re colored in Nemesis’s orange membranes, why wouldn’t they? They go down but whatever’s down here it’s getting warmer not colder and there’s no one around. Before they know it, more lights are triggered and they enter the foyer to a sanctuary. There are pews and stain glass windows, it’s practically an identical replica of the church, well save for the giant black statue of Nemesis surrounded by raised horrifying arms of men, women and children…I’d say their in the right place! Graham picks up a book that is meant to be the cult’s Bible and flips through the pages finding images of not only Nemesis, fire and brimstone, but also of a shriveled, humanoid creature hunched over and desperately hungry. And it’s not long before they come face to face with the Golyat.

Taken from the original Hebrew name for Goliath, the Golyats are a humanoid kaiju that infects people like a zombie by biting them and the more they eat the bigger they get. Although this kaiju is brand new to fighting Nemesis, this monster actually appeared in a different book, the Divide, where the world was decimated by these guys and had to create this huge bottomless trench. I am also kicking myself because while I did read the Divide, I did not finish it, simply because I had lost interest and had given it to my cousin who’s huge on books. Supposedly, the reason their inclusion was from a post on Robinson’s Facebook group the TRIBE saying to the tune of “wouldn’t it be cool if Nemesis fought the Golyats”. Robinson thought the same and decided to put them in. I was also spoiled by Robinson in a podcast discussing the new book.

As for the Golyats themselves, they’re fine. They still look like what they did in the Divide’s art work in the back from what I remember, with the addition of glowing bellies reminiscent of Nemesis’s membranes (although it’s unclear if they Have the same combustible liquid and it’s never shown) as well as darker skin. From my recollection, the Golyats in Divide looked more like the Wendigo while these ones, based on artwork done by Zach Cole, look something like the Bonies from Warm Bodies. My only problem with them is they are too humanoid, and that’s mostly my personal taste. For me, when I think of Kaiju I think of these inhuman monsters, mostly based off of animals or creatures. Save for Frankenstein and the Gargantuas, I initially didn’t like the more human looking creatures, but the Golyats have grown on me during the course of the book. They are very imposing; they closely remind me of the Titans.

Do you remember when I was talking about calling this book a different name besides Shin Nemesis? Well, I find this other name quite appropriate. The Golyats share many similarities with the Titans from that particular Anime. They eat people, they come in a variety of sizes, they heal from almost any wound (although they do still die in the traditional way) and they’re killed in the same manner as they do in the anime a few times.

So, my friends, welcome to Attack on Nemesis!

Anyway, the Golyat that appeared to them wasn’t some random monster the Cultists made but an actual Cultist. Graham found some discarded needles laying all over the pews. Coupled that with the fact the one in front of them knows and speaks in the broken stutter way and knows who Graham and Maigo are, you can safely assume how these things are made. This Golyat is surprisingly agile, able to dodge the bullets and declare that the apocalypse is coming. Upon being asked if it was judging on behalf of Nemesis, it declares that they are both being judged by it. It considers Maigo as holy, Graham as tainted. Before the creature could take a few chunks out of our heroes, Maigo pops off a round in its head and kills it instantly. 

Graham takes a Ziploc bag and peels off a piece of the Golyat and figure out something they both knew. The needles weren’t some mass suicide pact, but a transformation and their probably tearing people to shreds right now. Not only that but this is a smaller area and if Nemesis got wind of it the tidal wave alone would wipe it off the map. They make it back up where Munk, who has been unconscious thanks to a drunk Graham gave her, had been laying soundly asleep above ground as things go from bad to worse. The Golyats, the ones who all escape the underground chapel, are now wreaking havoc on Martha’s Vineyard. And after a call from Owens, Nemesis is on her way and she is hella pissed. Graham tells him to mobilize everyone and thing they got before she gets there. Maigo asks if he meant Protocol JH-345, where a fleet of explosive drones will be deployed to, well, blow crap up. Specifically anything that is not human. 

As Maigo runs like a gazelle with a cheetah on her tail, Graham picks Munk up which is not an easy task. She’s a plump lady and he’s an older individual who’s probably suffering from a load of joint pain. As they arrive at the dirty road, Blackwater calls and gives him the situation and it’s exactly what you’re thinking. Martha’s Vineyard is under attack by the Golyat horde, eating anything and anyone with a pulse. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, when they eat they grow fast and the more they eat the bigger they get. Graham tells her to meet them by the docks and shoot anything not human. He calls Owens and gets transportation for six people instead of two. Owens questions it but Graham says their conscripts volunteered to help the case. 

As Maigo arrives with her car, a Golyat tries to take a bite out of Graham, only able to get a chunk of his jacket. He shoots it in the gut and proceeds to…well…what I can only describe in the least graphic way possible…projectiles diarrhea and heals…EWWWWW!!!! I have no idea if this was a trait in the Divide book and if so I can only imagine what Robinson was thinking when he came up with this creature.

The Golyat regains its strength and manages to knock Maigo over the car hood. When things get back and Graham is likewise tossed around, he calls Owens to send his Drone but is saved by the most unlikely of people. Munk, still groggy from the knockout drug, shoots the creature in the middle of its “Praise be to Nemesis” speech. She’s pretty out of it and has no idea what’s going on. Things are interrupted by more Golyats, bigger than the last one, and coming straight at them. When they shoot it, bullets have no effect. New plan, they get in one car and are nearly killed by the monster until they hear a buzzing noise. Three drones come in at full speed and, all at once, have enough explosive force to blast off the head of the Golyat chasing them, killing it in one go. Drone Betty makes an appearance and says she’s happy they’re alive. Graham orders her to target other Golyats who are in the area. As the trio head to the docks, Owens contacts them and tells them Nemesis is on her way and she’s pissed. A ten on the Hudson Scale, first of its kind. And at this we the Golyats aren’t just perversions of nature but born from Nemesis herself…we’ll get back to this…

Graham tells Owens that the Golyats are growing with each meal and says they have needles and the Bible they found for analysis. They drive into town and see the amount of damage the monsters have done. One lady even turns into a Golyat and tries to eat them. It’s at this notion as they realize the severity of the Golyat threat. Much like with Zombies, it only takes one to infect a population and multiple out of control. Coupled with Nemesis’s high metabolic rate, they could grow in a matter of days. If a single Golyat were to leave the island then the world might as well say it’s goodbye. Good thing there are no huge multidimensional alien empires out there with their own kaiju armies, or trans dimensional devices capable of taking you to say a world that has teenagers piloting giant robots or an asshole who talks to mirror world mole monsters otherwise we’d be screwed! Has anyone seen Lily? 

Graham tells Owens Martha’s Vineyard is compromised and to initiate a scorched earth directive, nuke it if Nemesis doesn’t get there first. He also orders him to take out any seacraft, helicopters, aircraft or anything leaving the island that doesn’t respond to their communications. I guess the Golyats still have enough mental functions to fly a plane or drive a boat. Before long they’re ambushed by some more of these Titans fans, and the car gets destroyed. Graham is about to die and has one last thought about his ex-wife and daughter before being saved by Blackwater and the Nemesisters. Unfortunately, the number of sisters had dwindled in number since they were last seen before another one is turned into Golyat chow, leaving Blackwater and this other chick. After Blackwater’s bike gets wrecked, Drone Betty finally arrives to save them just as Nemesis shows up at least. She impales Her membranes, and the blast almost completely annihilates the island and everyone on It. Damn, this is way stronger than anything she had done in the past, able to obliterate a mountain. 

Graham calls off the nuke strike and Nemesis gives one big roar before turning her attention back to the sea. Instead of going back to sleep, however, she attacks some of the boats as many of them have Golyats, either stowed aboard or have infected the crew and passengers. Our team lands on one of the ships, while initially clear they find a lot of clothes strewn around. Graham figures they were wearing wetsuits and probably met up with a submarine. It’s also here where we’re introduced to Damion Dunn, the elusive leader of Divine Retribution, but technically we never meet him. Another Misstep of the book is not having a proper villain. Sure we have the Golyats, and they are major threats, but in terms of an end boss we don’t exactly meet him in person…well, not as a human anyway. As they inspect the boat, Maigo tells Graham Nemesis is heading straight for them along with a tsunami. It hits the boat and they are sent way too high in the air to be considered sea worthy, luckily no one is hurt but they are all visibly weary as Nemesis looms over them. 

I just imagine she’s giving them the same look Godzilla gave Kong in Godzilla vs. Kong. She’s not pissed at anyone, in fact she seems rather pleased to see them, particularly Graham and Maigo who she allows to touch her. We get a good description of her eyes, fiery and yellow and devoid of any humanity. Graham almost gets too close, but a raised lip and a snarl warns him until she sees Maigo. the Relationship between Nemesis and Maigo is very much akin to Godzilla and Dr. Serizawa, in many respects. A human protagonist having a connection with a monster, whether it be positive or negative is up for the narrative, and this is no different. In the previous books, the two had almost a symbiotic relationship, as Maigo’s DNA was used in Nemesis’s resurrection and served for the second and subsequently first book’s pilot, influencing her emotions and way of thinking and more specifically who to go after. And even when they were separated, Maigo still had a telepathic bond with her kaiju half. This bond was carried over to this book as well, although some things are less clear than others, as we’ll soon see. But the bottom line is Nemesis and Maigo Tilly are forever linked in all of Robinson’s works. 

Kindred spirits in more ways than one.

The two even have a nice moment together, Maigo going so far to give Nemesis a bit of a chin hug. But as all good things it comes to an end, Nemesis feels a disturbance in the Force and picks something. Maigo encourages her to go and does as she says, swimming off to find the evil forces plaguing the world. Graham and Maigo are both surprised by Nemesis remembering her, and it fills them with a new resolve to defeat Divine Retribution. The Quartet return to the NSO’s HQ and promptly in the meeting with the director of operations, Ashley Collins. That’s right, our former but still favorite stripo-cop has returned. I guess Watson and Cooper are still on that vacation they always talked about going on. Sadly, we never learn the fates of those two as well as Woodstock. Which is a shame but understandable with the number of the cast being as big as it is, don’t want to get it over saturated. 

We met back with Collins earlier when Graham wanted to go down to help Nemesis with her coastal patrol. They all meet in the newly refurbished Crow’s Nest, and Munk is just nerding out big time and starts getting really thirsty with Collins. The group separates, with Blackwater and Munk staying behind while Graham and Maigo meet with Collins and Owens. They’re currently tracking Nemesis’s movements and they determine she’s doing a methodical sweep of the coast, explaining how water distorts her senses much like how she can’t detect someone if they are underground. To make matters worse there are chapters all over the country. To make matters worse they’ve all gone silent and missing. Dunn is suspected of having mobilized the entire cult to enact his doomsday plan and any immediate action would tip them off. They do some pinpointing to properties owned by Dunn himself and the figure their best location is a mansion house by Scarborough, Maine, just south of Portland, Maine…the first city attacked by Nemesis. And low and behold, the pier that’s close to the property has its own Altar.

Well, technically the second, but the small town she tore apart probably doesn’t count as a major city, but I digress.

After the meeting, Collins gives Graham a pep talk. She was impressed by how he was right about everything up to this moment and she thinks instead of retirement, she thinks he needs a promotion. She explains she’s going to be the next Director of the NSO after the previous one stepped down after Martha’s Vineyard. And she thinks Graham should take her spot as Director of Operations. Graham, in a change of character, says he’ll think about it. He returns to his team and it’s here we finally get resolution on an age-old mystery. A figure in the saga of Nemesis that has gone unanswered since the very first book. We finally meet the lady, the myth, the legend! The Original Betty! 

She was one of the biker ladies Blackwater who was only named towards the end of Martha’s Vineyard and who later after the meeting, flashed her breasts at Graham…for no real reason other than she’s proud of them. There are other ways to meet people, but okay to each their own. Her real name is Tammy and, yes, she dated Hudson, and he subsequently couldn’t remember her name and started calling her Betty, which is kind of stupid reason and really telling how Hudson dated women before he got hitched With Collins in the Heisei Era. Why do I get the feeling that their relationship wasn’t entirely her fault to begin with as we were led to believe? Anyway, after that, they head over to Maine but before they go, Graham agrees to be the Director of Operations to Collins, but on the condition Maigo is his Deputy Director. They arrive and Graham gives the plan that they will split up; Blackwater and Original Betty will check out the area while he and Maigo just walk in the front door.

Brilliant!

The pair do so and quickly find it’s more or less completely fake. The paintings are fakes, the mansion is barely finished, not even shrines to Nemesis, which is sort of a given since the guy is completely obsessed with her like a creepy fan boy stalker. The whole place is a façade. They contact Owens and he tells them about a walking path two miles north of their position. And the parking lot near there is almost full, forty vehicles. So Graham and Maigo drive over there in their super-secret van. Graham gives the order for radio silence to Owens unless Nemesis decides to make a beeline for Maine. They find a mound of earth and quickly figure it to be the entrance to the Cultists’ lair, emphasized by a pair of Cultists wearing hooded robes walking towards them. Maigo takes initiative and pretends to be one of the Cultists and starts demanding the late comers show her everything they have, pass code, the sacred oath and their brand. The passcodes are just a series of numbers and letters while the sacred oath is a mix of the original Hymn to Nemesis and the heavy metal song. After showing their brands, Maigo lets them pass, only to be knocked out by Graham, who instructs her to take the pair’s robes. 

And about that brand, upon entering Maigo takes the lead and is asked by a guard to reveal the cult’s symbol. She does. Maigo was a member of Divine Retribution. Does this mean she’s the spy I neglected to mention until now that they made a bit of a deal out of?! Yeah, this is barely a footnote. To get ahead of myself, Maigo is an unwitting spy. I don’t know why Robinson decided to mention a spy at this point, only to reveal that DR has been tracking Maigo for years. Cool but you could cut it out and nothing would have changed. Maigo quietly reveals during the ceremony that she joined to get a better understanding of her connection with Nemesis before she figured out the obvious. The main chamber they are gathering in is what you’d expect from an underground cult with tapestries and a podium where a female leader who’s wearing nothing under her cloak. If this turns into an orgy, I’m with Graham, I’m out! No, the revelation is much worse. Tammy, aka Original Betty, has devolved into Cult Betty (happy 30th anniversary Digimon!) with no sign of Dunn. She goes on with her religious exposit about their Great Judge and his gift to them to bring on the Promised Day/Day of Unity, typically cult speech.

What is not typical is the huge red curtain that she pulls down to reveal three gigantic Golyat heads with snapping jaws, named Mammon, Ashmedai and Levistus, all of whom named after the demon princes of Hell from the Christian and Hebrew Bibles. Pretty sure this Mammon isn’t Australian in this. Maigo says they should split but are found out by Cult Betty. While she’s spouting her cultish babble, Graham tells Maigo to get topside and the procession are stunned to see the one person Nemesis spared on her first appearance. Their taken to the front of the crowd where they’re about to become Golyat Chow, when Graham causes a distraction by asking for a third party from the congregation of the damned, getting some choice members, when he pulls out his pistol and shoots a cult member in the head. The commotion causes the Cultists to go crazy and try charging them, but most are drawn to the three Golyat heads. Cult Betty gets her hand severed by a set of giant teeth, only to grow it back in the Golyat fashion and Digivolves into her ultimate form: Golyat Betty. She tries to eat his face, but Graham gives her a one way ticket to Golyat Hell, and takes Maigo up to the surface.

Saved by Blackwater and Munk, they call Owens to drop the Mother Of All Bombs down on the area before it turns into another Martha’s Vineyard. The MOABs have gone through a significant upgrade since Nemesis’s introduction because it smashes a crater into the park like it’s the end of the dinosaurs. Unfortunately, it didn’t kill all of the Golyats. Ashmedai, Levistus and Mammon rise out of the blast hole and are about the size of Nemesis if a few meters smaller. And who should show up but our best girl herself. As the crew head into a fairly sturdy looking lighthouse, Nemesis squares off against the three Golyats, her first real encounter with them. We get to see some new abilities, not just her now thinner and more agile body that make me think of the Evas from Evangelion, extendable jaws (though it’s unclear if it’s a separate set or her main ones) and a…mouth eye. Yeah, this thing is said to be some type of sensory organ she uses to detect the guilty. I guess the Atlantean Gene is no longer a factor in her finding you.

The fight is pretty brutal, she starts tearing into Mammon until Ashmedai and Levistus pull her off him and take bites into her and start growing. Each bite is excruciating but doesn’t seem to turn her into a Golyat, maybe whatever they used in the creation is canceled by her DNA. Maigo roots for her, even gives her fair warning when Ashmedai tries to tackle her and she sweeps the leg with her blade tail. As the battle gets closer to them, Graham gets a squadron of drones to kamikaze the three Golyats, this time they aim for the backs of the necks Attack on Titan style. They soon start picking off the Golyats one by one until only Ashmedai is left and subsequently slices him in half from the crotch upwards. As the kaiju falls Nemesis returns to sea and the crew is called back to Boston by Collins, who says something’s really rumbling in Neo-Boston.

My God…Dunn caused the Rumbling!

On the way back, Owens gives them the lowdown on the Golyats’ genetic makeup from when they collect it from Martha’s Vineyard. Turns out it’s a hybrid blend of Nemesis’s own DNA and a gene called RC-714, which was used in the Hunger series Robinson had wrote under a pen name about a gene that unlocks the Junk DNA on crops and animals that not only make said crops virtually indestructible but causes both animals and humans to become homicide berserkers that constantly mutate. But unlike that universe where the earth was subjected to that nightmare scenario, the scientists wisely decided this was a bad idea and destroyed every sample they had. Well, it turns out not all of the samples were destroyed and some of the scientists either were forced or joined willingly to combine it with Nemesis’s own already mutagenic DNA, and you have an unbelievable combination. Or in this case, the Golyats.

And here is where we get to the biggest missed opportunity of the book. This was an opportunity to not only connect the events of the first book to this one but also answer a question this book set up. The book has mentioned once or twice or a few times that the lab that created Nemesis was destroyed and everyone there, including (presumably) Gordon, were slaughtered with no survivors. What’s more, any attempt to analyze Nemesis’s DNA has been met with lack of success because the samples they took, chunks and bits blasted off of her during her attacks, would dissolve into fungal mush. So how does a cult get DNA that can’t be used? This should have been an easy solution. You could have a scientist who survived but has been living underground for years until the Cultists find them. Or have BioLance be in cahoots with them, as far as we know the company wasn’t shut down and is still operational. If you want to go beyond, make it a conspiracy. Have it say, I don’t know, there’s a government official secretly funding Divine Retribution and giving them Nemesis Prime’s DNA, after all, her remains were taken by the government to prevent the public from finding out they were unintentionally and indirectly tied to Nemesis’s creation because of Gordon going rogue. 

Or probably the best option for this, have General Lance Gordon be the return main villain. You’ll recall that throughout Project Nemesis, Gordon started spouting about how he could feel Nemesis as if they were the same people, going so far as to spout almost religious tirades. He continued this in Project Maigo too. Going so far as to offer Hudson to Karkinos, who he intended to make the New Nemesis after killing her, completely under his control. Why not make him the head of Divine Retribution? He could still have Nemesis’s DNA in him, make it so instead of needing a heart transplant he was cloning Nemesis to act as a prototype super soldier, the first in a line of unstoppable weapons and he decided to inject himself with some of her cells. Everything still happened as is but now he’s gone into hiding and amassed a legion of followers who claim he has been blessed by Nemesis by sharing her form, he is this world’s messiah. Then you could use his DNA and mix it with the RC-714 and still have an interesting bad guy.

But that’s just me. I’m not saying this to dunk on the book or Robinson himself. He is a brilliant writer and a very intelligent person; he knows how to craft a story and leave very few things out. Sure, not everything he does is gold, but you don’t feel like he’s just writing the story for a paycheck. Which leads me to believe he just simply didn’t think of this and wanted to keep the book as separate from the original as possible (which is redundant if you have returning characters and references but whatever) or the more likely outcome is he’s saving these plot points for future installments.

Back to the actual book, Maigo says they need to go for the head of the snake before they have to build a Divide. So, their ingenious plan? Go down into the Boston Underground and bring Brewer up to the Altar and become Nemesis’s next meal…okay not the best plan ever but it’s a start. They get geared up in these awesome combat suits, Blackwater gets a brand new shotgun, Munk is just going full Rambo getting armed to the teeth whilst Maigo goes for a simple katana. Might be stereotypical, but damn the girl’s got taste! They all new bikes for them all and head down into the underground. The quakes are getting more and more frequent. Blackwater sends her Nemesisters out to help the city-wide evacuation while Graham orders a military barrier to prevent any Golyats from spreading to the rest of the world. 

They arrive and it’s borderline abandoned, the entire population of the Underground, including Brewer and his gang, gather in the arena. Yup, that’s right, as the book says it’s like a post-apocalyptic, dystopian death pit. I’m a sucker for arena scenes in movies, like Gladiator or Spartacus. A pity we never got a proper chance to explore this place or have a scene like that in this book, but whatcha gonna do? Initially the crowd doesn’t notice their arrival until Munk tells everyone to shut up like an epic foghorn and everyone obliges. She then demands without any real authority given to her to hand Brewer over, followed by swears, and is immediately responded with the clicks of several hundred guns. Graham gets them to calm down and tries to get the crowd of blood thirsty apocalypse people to give Brewer to them, until the quakes start getting worse and worse until it causes a flood of Golyats. Screwing diplomacy, they grab Brewer and hogtie him to the back of the bike, fleeing the wave of mindless Titan Zombies who quickly start growing and multiplying. 

With the help of Drone Betty, whose AI also encompasses the bikes they’re riding, the group heads up to the surface where the newly bolstered numbers of the Golyat army have reached above ground. The good news is thanks to the city being evacuated, the Golyats can’t grow in number outside of any stragglers that had yet to leave, now never willing to. Graham uses his full authority as the Director of Operations and gives the word for every military asset they have to create a perimeter around the entire city and kill anything that’s not human. After an intense ride through the war-torn streets of Neo-Boston, their destination to the Altar is within reach of which then the quakes just get more violent and the underground Golyats begin to breach the surface. Upon hearing that Nemesis is on her way, Graham realizes that the Golyats are doing Brewer’s job for them since they are way worse than he is. Blackwater, who has Brewer on the back of her bike, tosses him off. He rolls around, screaming and begging for his life, but they go on deaf ears as the Golyats eat him alive. Yaaaaay, getting Brewer was pointless…I wish I was joking. They could have just waited for the Golyats to show up, and get Nemesis’s attention, but instead they wasted time by going down into the underground just to get him only to make him irrelevant. It’s like Robinson needed to fill a few page quotas or something.

They arrive at the Altar after Betty puts the pedal to the metal and nearly causes Graham to crap himself. Unfortunately, the Golyats start climbing the building World War Z (the movie) style and their path is blocked. Before Graham can order anything, Betty maneuvers through the horde and knocks a couple of them down in midair and guides them into Maigo’s sword, taking their heads off. Betty even does an Akira slide and snarkily asks for a tip and a five-star rating. Graham’s a little shaken up but heads in the metal gate and promptly closes it behind and gets into the elevator to the top of the Altar. We have a pretty heart felt moment between the pair, Graham telling her his plan of having him send the trio to safety while he stays and obverses the situation. Maigo objects for good reasons saying he doesn’t have to die. He responds that he’ll just call Betty to pick him up. He then confesses to her that it’s been a long time since he felt like a father to anyone, knowing he hasn’t known Maigo for that long, he feels that he sees her as his own.

This moment is my favorite highlight of the book, showing how people who go through hardships could still change and grow as a result. And Maigo is the same, saying she hasn’t had a dad in so long and gives him a hug, no words can describe their bond. As someone who comes from a found family, this hits me where I live. 

As they arrive at the top, Graham calls Betty to pick the three up. After they leave, Graham calls Owens on the status situation, says they’re holding their ground but most of the Golyats are converging on the Altar, specifically on Graham. Suddenly the city trembles and quakes, finally revealing the source to be, what else, a colossal Golyat the size of Nemesis herself. Damion Dunn has revealed himself to be the original Golyat who has been eating people, growing until he could match the goddess he so desperately worshipped and to judge the world like her. And Graham designates him as…F***k Face. Yeah, I’m not calling him that. It is a funny name to give to your Kaiju, but it lacks the menace you’re trying to provide. So, with my naming tendency I think it would be best to follow the theme of this book. Folks, meet the Founding Golyat aka the Founder!

The Founder rises from the city hole he’s made for himself only to be met by the very thing he desired to be, Nemesis. Lunging out of the water, Graham has a Free Willy moment from Hell, seeing directly into her membranes for the first time (first for anyone, really) and sees thousands of trapped souls entangled inside her boiling liquid, forever trapped in eternal torment for their crimes. She squares off against Dunn and the two have a pretty brutal fight in the middle of Neo-Boston. You’d think Nemesis would just cross her arms and let the Founder’s claws tear through the membranes covering them, blast them to oblivion so she could attack without fear until they grow back. But nope! As the fight continues, the Founding Golyat knows Graham is watching from a top the Altar and mitigates it by throwing the smaller Golyats at him like they were soft balls. I’ll give Dunn credit, he isn’t a mindless flesh eater like the others, thinking more strategically, even directly the other Golyats to attack and eat Nemesis.

The literal handful of Golyats he sent hit the building, presumably killing them, but three manage to land safely on the roof; a female, a big guy and a squirmy child Golyat. Unfortunate, but this is the nature of the infection. Graham manages to fight them off with a combination of using their own size and sporadic Agility against them, with the child actually being tricked to lunge at Graham only to plummet to its demise. While that is going on, the Founder has started to overwhelm Nemesis, stomping on her head when he forces her down and tries to crush it. Graham’s not doing so well himself, the big Golyat grabs him and tries to eat him, before getting loose and using its own bodyweight against it, punts the thing over the edge as well. Meanwhile, Dunn is being accosted by drones kamikazeing into his neck. Nemesis goes into “stealth mode”, where she dims her membranes to get an advantage over her foe. It works and knocks the Founding Golyat on his titanic ass but as the battle goes on, he gets the advantage on her, even tossing her into several buildings and causing a dust cloud to form. 

Nemesis jabs her tail into her opponent, causing enough pain to distract him momentarily before he takes a chunk of flesh and swallows it, growing bigger and stronger. The smaller Golyats are now swarming on her, eating her and growing but not at the same rate. Dunn then takes his claws in the same fashion as a sword and drives it into her chest, clutching her heart. Dunn laughs in a similar cackle as Jiger from Gamera Rebirth, declaring victory as the Golyats begin a feeding frenzy. Just then Graham sees a drone fly down to the bloodshed. It’s solitary passenger: Maigo Tilly. Graham flies down in his own drone to stop her. Thankfully the Golyats take no notice of them as the wine and dine on an all you could eat Nemesis buffet. At the foot of Nemesis’s forehead, Maigo stands there while Graham tries to talk her down. She says Nemesis isn’t dead, just waiting and it turns out she genuinely likes Graham but has chosen Maigo. And that’s when a giant third eye pops open, and Tentacles pull Maigo inside. Remember Nemesis, while a kaiju, is still technically a Gestorumque, a kaiju species created by the Aeros who need pilots in order to properly function. Well, Maigo Tilly is, in this and in every other universe Nemesis is part of, her pilot. Her Serizawa. 

Nemesis’s eyes turn a different color, returning to the old brown and blazing red. With a great roar she raises her claws up from the feeding frenzy bellow, probably launching a few Golyats around like they were nothing, puncturing eight membranes all at once. Both Graham and the Founding Golyat are no idiots and realize what’s about to go down.  The only difference is, Graham manages to go to a safe distance before Self-immolation, Dunn not so much.

Anyway, Nemesis explodes in a blast of pure destruction, vaporizing the Golyats and seriously injuring Dunn but not killing him. The city is destroyed in the process, and Nemesis rises from the debris and humbles the Founding Golyat. Severing his limbs and generally carving him up before taking his head, plunging it into her chest membrane before blasting it off, finally killing the Founder and ending Dunn and subsequently saving the world. And then Karkinos, Scylla, Typhon, Drakon and even the Mega-Tsuchi approach her and bow before the Queen of the Monsters! No, that doesn’t happen but now I’m wishing for it! 

A few days after the battle, Neo-Boston is a ghost town. Again. Pretty sure Boston in the Heisei Era Nemesis books never got rebuilt either. The remnants of the Golyats were eventually wiped out and pretty sure Divine Retribution were all either Golyats or were apprehended by authorities, we don’t know their ultimate fate. What we do know is our heroes are waiting for Nemesis to arrive at the Altar, the only building left standing in Neo-Boston. Graham and Blackwater are going steady while Munk brings donuts, having been something of an official agent herself and crushing hard on Collins. Nemesis soon arrives and lowers her head to the roof and reveals a second face, Maigo’s face, which spits out the main person. Graham runs to Maigo’s side and begs her to be alive, almost sobbing, to which she comments how he’s gone soft while she was gone.

And so, our novel ends with our heroes at NSO watching as Nemesis swims off to the sunset. Ready for anything. With a snack or two.

TO BE CONTINUED ON PAGE 3.