started The Magnus Archives after hearing about it from u/improperlyparanoid (join our [Readalong](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1nqa0qs/themagnusarchivesreadalongannouncementand/)!) and was sucked right in. It’s an epistolary podcast following the employees of The Magnus Institute. Each episode is centered around a statement given by someone who has experienced a supernatural event, but as the series progresses you start to realize that some statements might be connected, and you get to know the staff better. I couldn’t listen to anything else until I’d finished all of it, and any horror media I consume from now on will be colored by TMA.


Book Club: The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler

This was so good, but so sad. I liked all three POVs, but my favorite was Damira, the scientist whose consciousness has been uploaded into a mammoth. A rightful winner of the 2025 Hugo Award for best novella.


Parents: Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

Another novel with a medieval setting. Lapvona is centered around a small village and its inhabitants. It’s a story about family, power, and religion, told through an unsettling cast of characters.


Epistolary: Wylding Hall by Elisabeth Hand

The story of the folk band and their fateful summer at Wylding Hall, an old country estate that may be haunted, is told through a set of interviews. The audio version was great, and the mystery of the vanished lead singer was actually pretty spooky.


Published in 2025: North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther by Ethan Rutherford

This is a sea voyage story done right. Endless, identical days of sailing through open water are mixed with brutal descriptions of the whaling industry, and the harsh life of the crew is juxtaposed with scenes from the rich family who owns the ship. The magical elements tie everything together, and all in all this makes for a strong debut novel.


Author of Color: Luminous: A Novel by Silvia Park

Another strong debut novel, set in a future where North and South Korea have unified, and where robots are integrated into society. The book features some really compelling characters and fascinating discussions about humanity and personhood, but sometimes the plot gets lost in too many storylines and POVs.


Self Published: Vårt liv är inte vårt (Our Life is Not Our Own) by Orest Lastow

I picked this up because it’s written by a professor at Lund University, my alma mater and where I live. The story is also set at the University, and while I haven’t studied physics, the academic atmosphere is very familiar. It’s also fun when you recognize all the pubs and street names. The story itself was okay: the technical aspects were interesting, but the characters were pretty flat and the dialogue stilted. I also think it’s a “it’s not you, it’s me thing” – these types of “techno-thrillers” (like Waking Giants by Sylvain Neuvel and Dark Matter by Blake Crouch) aren’t really my cup of tea. It’s been translated into English though, so hopefully one of you here will try it and like it!


Biopunk: A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennet

This hardly needs introduction – I suspect that the majority of everyone handing in a Bingo card will have read either this book or The Tainted Cup for the Biopunk square. A Drop of Corruption is not as good as the first book, but I still had a great time with Ana and Din and the fascinating world that Bennet has built. Eagerly looking forward to A Trade of Blood later this year.


Elves/Dwarves: The River has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

I really recommend the audio book: songs are an important part of the story, and the narrator performs them well. Amal and her sister also play the harp and flute in the background, which helps set the scene of this fairytale. I really liked the prose, but the story itself felt a little rushed and without depth.


LGBTQIA Protagonist: Färjan by Mats Strandberg

A horror story set on a cruise ship between Sweden and Finland. These cruises are infamous for a lot of alcohol and partying, but

families with small kids are also often among the passengers. This weird mix makes a perfect setting for a gory horror story where no one can escape. Mats Strandberg is great at character portraits, and I can tell he had fun writing this book. It’s also been made into a mini-series! (only Swedish subtitles though)


Short Stories: Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez

A compelling collection of short stories centered around women. Some stories are stranger than others, but the overarching atmosphere is haunting and brutal. I will definitely be reading more by Enriquez.


Stranger in a Strange Land: Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I can see why this novel does not work for everyone, but to me, the dark humor and homages to/parodies of classical authors and books never got old. UnCharles was a fun character to follow, and while the book in general is pretty bleak, I like that it ended somewhat hopefully.


Recycle a Bingo Square – Horror (2023): The Haar by David Sodergren

I think this is the book that surprised me the most, in a good way. It’s a (very) gory horror story, it’s a romance novel (maybe even counts for monsterfucking?), and it’s an elderly Scottish lady getting revenge and standing up for herself. Yes, the villains are cartoonishly evil, but that makes it all the more satisfying when they meet their (very bloody) end. (this review sums it up so well (mild spoilers though))


Cozy SFF: Lirael by Garth Nix

This might not be cozy for everyone, but I love the atmosphere and the characters of the Old Kingdom series. Lirael’s journey of self-discovery and exploration of the magic library was fun, and Sam's story really grew on me. (also, who doesn't love Moggett)


Generic Title: Våran hud, vårat blod, våra ben by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Surprisingly, this square was one of the hardest to fill, so I was happy when I found this short story collection by John Ajvide Lindqvist (JAL). He is a very skilled horror writer, and I enjoyed reading stories that felt different in style from what I’ve read of him previously. As with Mats Strandberg’s Färjan, I could tell that JAL had had fun when writing these. I also enjoyed the intro, where he talks about his writing habits.


Not a Book: Flow (movie) by Gints Zilbalodis, Matiss Kaza, and Ron Dyens

A hopeful and bittersweet movie about a group of animals who suddenly find themselves in a flood. It’s entirely without (human) dialogue, but it still manages to convey a lot of emotions. I recommend this to everyone.


Pirates: Terrestrial History by Joe Mungo Reed

A story told through four generations, from a current/near-future Scotland to a future colony on Mars. The climate dystopia parts were hard to read because of how real they felt, but despite all the bleakness, the story also contains hopeful elements. It reminded me of Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel: both books evoke this feeling of nostalgia for something you’ve never experienced, and both books also handle time travel in a way that I like.



 

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I finally understand The Lord of the Rings

This is going to be a long post because my experience with this book deserves nothing less. My whole life I have danced around lord of the rings. I have a super vague memory of watching them as a very young child when my much older brother's girlfriend brought them over and we had a movie marathon over a weekend. I have almost no memory of that viewing experience at all. It has always seemed like something that just doesn't resonate with me because (I know how this sounds and I can't believe there was ever a version of myself that though this) I thought that hobbits were weird and game me the ick...... I KNOW I KNOW.

Anyways, despite that I have always been an avid fantasy reader, reading things like warriors as a youngster and The Ranger's Apprentice. Then I stopped reading until probably the middle of high school when I found Game of Thrones and it totally reignited my love for reading and fantasy in general. Since then I am now ending college and have read The First Law, Asoiaf, The Five warrior angels, Red rising, a hint of Malazan, and a hint of Suneater. So not like extremely well read and you can definitely sense the bubble I was in lol.

I had also bounced off of fantasy in the last two years ish and just found myself enjoying other stuff. (Salley Rooney, DFW, Thomas Pynchon). However, over spring break I got the sudden urge to get lost in a fantasy world. So I go to B&N and impulsively buy..... The Shadow of What was Lost by James Islington. Now this is not a diss on Mr. Islington as I really did enjoy the book and will for sure read the sequels in the future but after I read that book I realized it wasn't really the vivid sprawling fantasy world I wanted. (again not a diss at all, I'm not sure that was even his goal with that series as the shining aspect of that seemed to be the complex plot which I enjoyed immensely)

A couple days later, I found at half price books a creepy ass edition of fellowship of the ring that was torn to shreds for like four dollars and thought what the hell, I had read like 100 pages of it years ago and convinced myself that my biases were correct and I would hate it and that's exactly what happened. But I thought maybe this time would be different, I had grown a lot as a reader, and have been now an aspiring writer myself for a year or two. I am now on the final chapter of Fellowship and am just obsessed in every sense. It has been one of my most enjoyable reading experiences of my life. It is an absolute achievement in literature and I am so pleased that I found it at this exact point in my life.

I don't know if it's because coming hot off Licanius that felt a lot like a debut novel of a person that was inspired to try and give their idea life. Whereas Fellowship feels like a master of his craft challenging himself to use every ounce of his talent to create something important. It is just perfect. Every word is perfect. But that is not to say that it is challenging to read exactly, it just flows. I find that I can read fifty pages in the same time it would take me to read twenty of a less complex prose. Gimli and Legolas are almost bringing me to tears every time they are on page together. I feel like each character and culture is so distinct and all I want to do is learn more about the history of this place. and most importantly... I fucking love hobbits and would lay down my life for every single one of them. I can't WAIT for the next two books.

"What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea"


TLDR: I always believed the lie that LOTR was just basic boring fantasy that I had outgrown... it's perfect... perfect.. down to the last minute detail.

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Why non-human races are not popular in fantasy anymore?

I've spotted an interesting tendency in recent years - we have less and less non-human races in fantasy. There were interesting times when everyone wanted to be like Tolkien (publishers especially), due to what we have our lovely standard 'DnD' setting with elves/dwarves/gnomes/orcs/halflings etc. There is a lot of fantasy using this set of races - some more blatantly, some with deviations, but it was logical and, to be honest, a good thing that it started to meet it's end.

So finally, we could get a new era of fantasy, where each author could express themselves and create totally new, unique, non-Tolkien inspired races... Wait, what? What do you mean there is no more races now?

Let's just too at this list of most popular epic fantasy https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/50.The\_Best\_Epic\_Fantasy\_fiction\_ . As you can see, in 90's-00's everything shifted and the most icon fantasy of time like ASOIAF, The Wheel of Time, The Realm of Elderlings, Mistborn, Gentlemen Bastard, The First Law etc, The Kingkiller Chronicle, The Sword of Truth (lol, how did it get there if everyone hates it?) doesn't have any non-human races OR their presence is very limited and not very significant.

To be objective i should mention Malazan and Bas-Lag series where we have a great racial representation, and Stormlight Archive where races are not so numerous, but nevertheless, humans are not the only one sentient beings there and they are not elves, so it counts. To be even more objective, i should mentioned that all fantasy genre is not defined by books mentioned above, there is a lot more, from less known to completely obscure, which also could have a lot of racial representation, but first - do you like it or not, each genre is mostly defined by the most popular books and it's what most people read, second - even in less known title this tendency also exists. Maybe not to that extent, but nevertheless.

Worldbuilding is the definitive feature of fantasy, because here you can get great stories, interesting characters, morals, philosophies etc., pretty much everything you can get in another genres... Plus dragons, as Brandon Sanderson said in one of his lectures. And having different races is a great way to extend the worldbuilding, by providing different cultures, mentalities and customs which can create conflicts and tensions, and there is nothing better for a good story than a good conflict. I get it, many people, especially experienced readers, are tired of elves. I understand it and partially have those feelings myself, but honestly, even oldest tropes made right can still look good - check Dragon Age: Origins. Not a book, but a good example of building interesting world from generic material.

In my humble opinion, shift from standard Tolkien-like set of races to something new was natural, but instead many authors abandoned non-human races completely. Which is such a waste. So i wonder why in your opinion that happened and why people are not so fond of this part of worldbuilding anymore?

Also, let's share you're examples of books with a good unique set of races. I already mentioned Malazan and Bas-Lag, so will add The Bird That Drinks Tears by Lee Youngdo. What are your examples?

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"Gentleman Explorer" Type Fantasy Series?

Hello Fantasy gang. I was recently listening to Stuff You Should Know's episode on The Bone Wars (found here) and it got me wondering if any books or series are set in or influenced by this period.

The Bone Wars were basically a pissing contest between two American paleontologists when the field was really starting to heat up. It got me thinking about how there are probably some authors who took a crack at the golden age of the Gentleman Explorer (think white men in safari hats, probably Victorian era to pre WW1) and I think there is a lot of material there to work with.

Part of the appeal is, to be honest, just how much of a monster most of these people were, but the concept of discovery right as science and industry were really getting a kick-start is pretty interesting. I used to find this period of history a little boring but that is more based on how it was taught in school versus the time itself. I appreciate any recommendations!

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In pursuit of fantasy inspired by Aztec mythology

I apologize if that may not sound like much because it’s just that I have a fascination with Aztec mythology for its deep lore such as the Quetzalcoatl creature.

So basically what I was looking for was again just some well written stories based on Aztec mythology with of course supernatural elements since those kind of stories are my jam.

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25 sapphic fantasy books you may not know of - My completed Oops All Sapphics! blackout bingo card with reviews

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This is year two of r/fantasy bingo for me, and my first year actually planning ahead to complete it, so this time I went for a themed card: Oops, it’s all sapphics! 

I’ve read a lot of sapphic SFF for several years now so filling out a whole card with new-to-me reads meant digging past some of the well-known options that would have normally fit these squares. Some are still new and popular (Suri, Tesh, etc), but there's no Priory of the Orange Tree or Bookshops and Bonedust here! Because of that, I wanted to round them all up and share so that other sapphic-liking readers might also be able to find new things among them.

Queer women main characters were my only criteria. Most are adult fantasy, some are YA. Most include a sapphic relationship, but a few just have confirmed queer women without a romance. For each one I’ve written my own blurb, a star rating, and a short review. At the bottom I’ll share some of what I learned about my own taste after compiling them all.

1. Knights and Paladins - Lady’s Knight by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

Pitch: A blacksmith’s daughter masquerades as a knight in a tourney to save a young lady from a marriage she doesn’t want.
Score: 4/5
Review: Goofy anachronistic medieval parody romp with a fourth-wall-breaking narrator that you’ll either vibe with or not—and I did vibe! Two perspectives that earnestly nailed the toughness and sweetness of learning your sexuality as a young adult. 

2. Hidden Gem - The Oblivion Bride by Caitlin Starling

Pitch: An unlikely heir enters a political marriage with a war alchemist in space to solve the truth about the magic in her bloodline.
Score: 3/5
Review: A neat premise with a space curse mystery, and it’s nice to see a little age gap marriage of convenience for the ladies. The plot kinda goes off the rails though and I’m going to start docking points for overly liberal use of the word “fuck” for no reason.

3. Published in the 80s - Silverglass by J.F. Rivkin

Pitch: Sword and sorcery adventure romp with a team up between a scholarly sorceress and a wild mercenary lady.
Score: 3.5/5
Review: Just a couple free-loving, chaotic bisexuals kissing each other and other people and fighting bad guys. So pulpy and of its time that I adored it and devoured the quartet. 

4. High Fashion - Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey

Pitch: A young woman with super strength learns to box to earn freedom from a forgotten military town hidden between Mexico and the US.
Score: 4/5
Review:  A ridiculous premise about vigilante orphans that takes itself completely seriously in a weirdly dark alternate modern setting. Carey has yet to ever do me wrong writing a slow burn relationship and it's all the yearning of teen infatuation and heartbreak here.

5. Down With The System - Metal From Heaven by August Clarke

Pitch: A former child laborer joins a bandit commune to take revenge on an oligarch.
Score: 3/5
Review: An initially cool premise that goes way off the rails into a poorly-explained marriage competition. My MC is so cool she has tattoos and rides motorcycles and bangs everyone. Loved the concepts, but the themes and the plot are totally discordant with each other.

6. Impossible Places - The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

Pitch: Two sisters with magical voices live at the edge of a faerie forest and one falls in love with a mysterious fae.
Score: 4.5/5
Review: I’m a sucker for a nice fable-y story and I loved the writing style of This Is How You Lose The Time War so I loved El-Mohtar here too. Lots of pretty, flowery metaphors and wordplay and sisterly love.

7. A Book In Parts - The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri

Pitch: In an alternate medieval Britain, a witch and a knight fated to fall in love

and kill each other across lifetimes fight to break their cursed story.
Score: 2.5/5
Review: I am going to ban the word “fuck” from newly-published fantasy. It is not a shorthand for making a story gritty and adult if your plot and character development are not equally mature. Suri let me down bad here.

8. Gods and Pantheons - Godkiller by Hannah Kaner

Pitch: A mercenary with a grudge against gods falls in with a former knight and a displaced noble girl attached to a tiny godling.
Score: 3/5
Review: The prologue went so hard I was sold but then it turned into banter and average character writing. Of note: the female main character is explicitly bisexual but she’s not in a WLW relationship in this book. I’m given to understand maybe later in the trilogy? But I’m not planning to read on.

9. Last in a Series - The Sovereign by C.L. Clark

Pitch: Finale of a flintlock fantasy trilogy about overthrowing a colonizing empire.
Score: 2.5/5
Review: I found the character writing in this trilogy really inconsistent the entire time and really only kept at it in sapphic solidarity and for the last in a series square. You can’t insist that the series is full of subtle political maneuvering and then just constantly show people blackmailing each other out loud to one another’s faces in front of witnesses.

10. Club or Readalong - Hungerstone by Kat Dunn

Book

Pitch: A retelling of old vampire novella Carmilla in which a repressed Recency-era woman is enticed to fight against her circumstances by a mysterious stranger. 
Score: 3/5
Review: I don’t think the “hunger” theme really came through strong enough here to be as dark as it wanted to be. Not a very girls’ girl take on the story at all either, sadly.

11. Parent Protagonist - The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard

Pitch: A captive space engineer enters a marriage of convenience with the sentient spaceship AI of a pirate fleet.
Score: 3/5
Review: This was a cool concept but the execution was pretty shallow. The brief scenes showing the main character assimilating into pirate culture just weren’t convincing enough to make me care about her or their relationship.

12. Epistolary - Rust in the Root by Justina Ireland

Pitch: In an alternate Depression-era New York, a young woman with root magic goes on a mission to destroy a magical blight.
Score: 3/5
Review: Enjoyed the magical “depression” concept but this was just a decent romp that otherwise didn’t knock my socks off. It really wanted to have things to say about Black history and tradition but mostly settled for an occasional paragraph about racism without a plot that really wove into that theme.

13. Published in 2025 - The Incandescent by Emily Tesh

Pitch: A teacher and a school cop at a magical boarding school begrudgingly work together to prevent a demonic incursion.
Score: 3/5
Review: The demon magic, the commentary on class inequality in secondary education, and the sapphic romance all felt like the sideshow to each other in some Escher-esque illusion where nothing actually winds up on top. Less than the sum of its parts. Particularly bummed that the "primary" romantic interest has so little chemistry.

14. Author of Color - Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust

Pitch: A princess cursed to poison anything she touches fights to break out of her curse.
Score: 4/5
Review: A really lovely journey full of emotional depth around conflicting feelings of shame, longing, anger, and betrayal. It isn’t written like a fable, but it almost feels adjacent to one in that I felt like I could predict most of the reveals but in a way that felt pleasant, not boring.

15. Small Press or Self-Pub - The Necessity of Rain by Sarah Chorn

Pitch: Three women in a world of magical insect people experience grief, loss, and hope after escaping a war.
Score: 3/5
Review: Difficult to describe. Difficult to follow. Difficult to rate. Lots of pretty metaphors and imagery

covering for a thin plot. And yet I teared up near the end?

16. Biopunk - Our Hideous Progeny by C.E. McGill

Pitch: The great niece of Dr. Frankenstein and her husband use his notes to build and animate a giant sea creature. 
Score: 4/5
Review: A flawed protagonist, a messy relationship, and angry feminists. Lots of pining and uncertainty and really all I wanted more from it was for it to be even darker than it was.

17. Elves/Dwarves - The Thousand Eyes by A.K. Larkwood

Pitch: Space opera duology sequel in which three grudging allies fight against eldritch snake gods.
Score: 4.5/5
Review: The sapphic relationship was more at the forefront in the first book, but I really enjoyed the adventure here even if the plot totally flew off in weird directions. Just a well-told story. Protagonists make mistakes, learn, take that knowledge into the climax, the twists be twisting, and dammit Talarassas you self-destructive little gremlin.

18. LGBTQIA Protagonist - Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall

Pitch: A young noblewoman in a magical regency era is cursed and must gain the assistance of a mysterious lady duke to save her reputation.
Score: 3/5
Review: Great first half with the mystery and will-they-won’t-they attraction but the second half flounders. The puckish fourth-wall narrator will either be to taste or not but I found fun.

19. Five Short Stories - By Her Sword edited by Erin Branch

Pitch: Short story anthology of sapphic sword and sorcery romantasy.
Score: 2/5
Review: Tragically unimpressed with almost every single story in here. Constant modern slang in alleged medieval settings. Sex scenes that felt obligatory instead of earned. I am putting the word “fuck” on a shelf out of reach until fantasy can behave itself. 

20. Stranger in a Strange Land - The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

Pitch: A young protegee of a colonized island assimilates into the empire to overthrow it by rising to the top.
Score: 3.5/5
Review: I’m not really one for the whole “competency porn” thing but I guess if you make it a lesbian political savant I’m in. I am always down for a fantasy about warfare by way of economic manipulation too. Book one has never met a subplot, and there’s a bit too much summary of events out of scene, but I was compelled to continue. The political intrigue has a sort of powerscaling problem of exponential quadruple twisting as the series goes on but somehow my enjoyment was also exponential as I devoured the trilogy. 

21. Recycle a Bingo (Dark Academia 2024) - The Society for Soulless Girls by Laura Steven

Pitch: Two roommates at a boarding school with a decade-old curse work together to solve its mysteries.
Score: 4/5
Review: Painfully relatable teen yearning and angst from two extremely opposite young women. Had a good old time. TW for >!animal death!< because it’s pretty rare that anything in a novel can stop me in my tracks but I did have to put it down for a breather.

22. Cozy - The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older

Pitch: Third in a series about a lesbian Sherlock and Watson-type pair solving academic crimes on a human-settled Jupiter.
Score: 3/5
Review: I’ve not been terribly impressed with this series up till now but I think this one was my favorite. The mystery in this one was so badly done but the relationship was self-destructive and sad, which I enjoy. Some people will cry “miscommunication trope” on it, but I liked it better than the prior two.

23. Generic Title - Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs

Pitch: Modern magical realism about spellbooks written in blood in which two sisters and a sequestered young author of ink blood books fight to learn the truth of their magic.
Score: 4.5/5
Review: The sapphic relationship isn’t the star here, but honestly I didn’t mind it being incidental when the rest of the story was so full of lovely turns of phrase and emotional turmoil and neat magic. The plot and the character arcs

all revolved around family, trust, and safety versus agency in a way that felt very tightly-written.

24. Not A Book - Vampire in the Garden (anime) by Wit Studio

Pitch: In an industrial city split between warring vampires and humans, a young soldier and a vampire girl trust each other to escape the fighting. 
Score: 3.5/5
Review: A real short five episode run, but I really liked how dark and emotional it was. I’ve got a massive spreadsheet of yuri/GL manga and anime and it’s real tough finding ones that aren’t infantilizing. Nice to have a rare fantasy anime where the GL romance is part of a larger picture.

25. Pirates - A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White

Pitch: A space racecar driver framed for murder falls in with a ship of smugglers looking for a legendary treasure ship.
Score: 3/5
Review: A mostly fun space heist thing but didn’t pull me in emotionally. It didn’t feel like the work was on the page to make me actually care about any of the characters.

Eligible books I read during the bingo period that got shuffled off the card for one reason or another:

Spear by Nicola Griffith \- An arthurian reimagining with a genderqueer lady knight
The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling \- The cannibal nuns in a siege book
Song of the Huntress by Lucy Holland \- A wild hunt retelling about an ancient warrior and a queen
Fate’s Bane by C.L. Clark \- A celtic-inspired novella about a ward and an heir

Some things I’ve noticed about my selections and ratings:

I rated the YA reads higher than expected: Only 4/25 reads here are young adult (Lady’s Knight, Rust in the Root, Girl Serpent Thorn, Society For Soulless Girls) but three of them I rated 4 stars. That’s a much higher average than for the 21 adult reads. Typically I don’t enjoy YA at all anymore, so this was surprising. Maybe I have higher tolerance for YA when it’s sapphic because themes of self-doubt and yearning that are often in a young adult romance are things I enjoy most in a romance plot generally? Or perhaps it’s a survivor bias situation because a YA read has to impress me more immediately for me to stick with than an adult fantasy would.

Fuck off with the word “fuck”: Wow I sure am tired of the f-bombs in newly-published fantasy, which isn’t a phenomenon unique to sapphic fantasy. Swearing is fine and all, but all this fucking about always seems to be shoehorned in as an expletive to make sure I know this story is Mature even when the character work is lacking any true maturity.

Edited: To fix my numbering that the ctrl+v broke, whoops.

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BINGO-ish with mini-reviews, the game that broke the slump :)

So since 2022, I've been a reading slump. Trying to get the bingo card done this year finally helped me break it and I've read 10 books since January 2026, so I think next year's bingo card is toast :D. For this year, I didn't get bingo, but I did get quite a lot, so here it is:

Knights and Paladins: Oath of Gold by Elizabeth Moon, book three of the Deed of Paksenarrion. I enjoyed Paks's story very much. It's a very '80s, early '90s story in that terrible things happen, but there's hope and value to be found in the terrible things that happen. In other words, these terrible things kind of happen for a reason, which is an attitude that was very, very prevalent in the '90s, which I personally remember as a pretty optimistic time. The whole series of The Deed of Paksenarrion, especially book two, Divided Allegiance, and book three, Oath of Gold, is also one of the best depictions of PTSD I've ever seen, including how hard it is to overcome PTSD—which makes sense, as I believe Elizabeth Moon is herself a veteran of combat. So, I highly recommend the books if you're looking for a great knights and paladins series or a book dealing with PTSD.

Hidden Gems: Murdoch's Web by Chalkie Clark. This is a science fiction self-published book with a giant spider as the main character who's also an asteroid miner. Despite my personal arachnophobia, I really liked this story. Murdoch was a fun, likable protagonist, and there's a human character that shudders right alongside me whenever she interacts with them, and that made the hairy spideriness much more bearable.

Down with the System: Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan. I really enjoyed this series, and perhaps it is fitting that it was the series that really broke my reading slump, because I bounced off this series in 2022 when my reading slump was really getting started and I stopped reading. This time around, it completely broke the slump, which was great. It is an amazing series overall that deals with a kind of French Revolution style of plot, and I did a full review for it on this subreddit and also on my blog if you're interested in that.

Gods and Pantheons: The Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne, which is a reread in preparation for reading the rest of the series which is now out. I enjoyed the reread even more than the original read. Although I will say that "thought-cage," which the author uses in place of describing a mind, remains annoying to me. It is, however, a really, really fun high fantasy story set in a world inspired by a post-Valhalla Viking society. It's great.

Last in a Series: Arc of a Scythe: The Toll by Neal Shusterman. And despite the fact that I virulently disagreed with the themes of the whole series, I still recommend Arc of a Scythe as a series. I think it's a very interesting exploration of what would happen if humans discovered how to beat death in all its forms. For this little mini-review, I will just say that books one and two were great, following the story mostly through the eyes of two characters who are either becoming or are new Scythes—people who "glean" (murder) other human immortals to keep the population under control and provide some uncertainty and purpose for people's lives. And that is, in fact, part of the philosophical underpinning I disagree with.

Book Club or Read-along Book: The Maleficent Seven by Cameron Johnston (read by my discord book club). It was great fun, but ultimately the book tried to take itself too seriously and had way too many characters, and I didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped to. It's kind of a spoof take on The Magnificent Seven.

Epistolary: The Postmortal by Drew Magary, which is told as a series of blog posts or diary entries, if you prefer, interspersed with news articles and interviews and the like. It tells the story of when the world discovers the cure for aging and all the chaos that follows this discovery, as seen through the eyes of the narrator, John Farrell, who gets this cure for aging and thus stays

his age of 29, I think, throughout the whole story. It was a very interesting and more realistic exploration than Arc of a Scythe. That being said, I'm not sure I agree with the author about how events would unfold. I think we could cope with not aging. But the book itself was still very interesting and I recommend it if you're looking for that kind of exploration of immortality.

Published in 2025: The Devils by Joe Abercrombie. I know The Devils has gotten heat online for being too derivative or whatever, but I really enjoyed it. I liked all the characters and I thought the ending was very typical of Abercrombie. It's not that all people are monsters; it's that the systems we've built turn most people into monsters because only the monsters win in these systems. And that is a very Abercrombie message, in my opinion.

Small Press or Self-Published Books: Death on Luna by Terence M. Davis. This is a Sarvat Machado story, and it is written in that old kind of noir detective style. It's a lot of fun. Machado is an investigator who owns a ship called Nine-Ball and lives in orbit around Jupiter, which is also where he kind of investigates things in order to make money. The science in the series is a lot of fun, very realistic, the investigation is fantastic, and the style is very nostalgic for those who like that noir style of investigation.

Not a Book: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms as an adaptation of the Dunk and Egg stories. This made me really happy. It was a great exploration of knighthood in the Seven Kingdoms by George R. R. Martin and how those who hold power often fall shy of honor. It was really, really well done, and I will be doing a review episode on this channel on the themes explored in there.

And that's my bingo-ish card for this year :D I'm quite proud of it, given that I only really started in January. I also published this as a video on my tiny book tube channel if you want to listen to the yap instead of the read. (It's essentially exactly this content. https://youtu.be/9pbzYeqe1TQ )

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The Poet Empress was so close to perfect, until the ending



SPOILER WARNING

So I finished The Poet Empress by Shen Tao yesterday, and I am overall very conflicted on how I feel about the book right now. For the first hundred pages or so, I thought it was enjoyable but had some noticeable shortcomings: the prose felt a little clunky, the pacing felt too fast to let some things sit as much as I thought they should, and the political situation felt a little too simplistic.

However, there's a point around the 90 page mark where things start to shift, and I started to enjoy the book way more. I honestly thought the next 250 pages or so were incredible. If you've read the book and seen some of the discussion of it online, you likely know why so many people ended up loving it: the flawed (or outright awful) but fascinating characters, the emotional gut-punches, the beauty and the terror of the world and the magic system. I was beginning to feel like everything great people said about this book was true, and going into the last forty or so pages, I felt like this book was going to get a pretty easy 9/10 or higher from me.

But the last little bit of this book had some things that really bothered me and made me leave the book with a sour taste in my mouth, and I haven't seen people discussing any of them. It seems like the vast majority of the people who read this book didn't have their opinions negatively impacted by them, so I'm really really curious to know if anyone else had these same issues, or if I may be misinterpreting some things in the book. So here are the problems I had with the ending:

1. I think this may be the easiest thing for people to agree with me on, but if Isan was ultimately going to end up on the throne, we should probably have spent more time with him. This was by no means a deal-breaker for me, I just think that since his position as the third son and his powers ended up being so consequential to the climax of the story, it would have been nice if he was a more fleshed out character instead of just fruit boy.
2. The entire book leads up to the heart-spirit poem, and then we never get to see it, which is so, so disappointing. The problem is exacerbated by the fact it kinda ends up being a deus ex machina to bring Terren back to life. There was no prior indication that anything like that was possible. And the fact we don't see the heart-spirit poem made me realize there was a distinct lack of actual poetry in the book with a magic system centered around poetry. Its really unfortunate, because the poetry that was included was phenomenal and I loved every bit of it. In the end, the poetry didn't matter, all that mattered was how Wei felt about Terren, and how much she knew about him. You could argue that's the point, but if that's the case why even have the poetry aspect in the first place if you're not going to use it? Again, the entire plot was leading up to this poem, it was absolutely crucial to the story. I honestly thought there would be an entire page or two of poetry. But no, we got...the title. That's it. Oh, and as a cherry on top, Wei is able to transfer her consciousness into a flying magic fish, but also still be aware of everything happening around her real body at the same time, so that she can narrate all the action to us. Again, this comes out of NOWHERE.
3. The biggest thing that rubbed me the wrong way with the end of this book was the treatment of Maro. I'm really wondering if I missed something or if I critically misunderstood some parts of this story. Why is Wei simultaneously so empathetic towards Terren yet so uncharitable towards Maro by the end of this book??? Maro is almost made out as more of a villain in the climax than Terren is, and it makes no sense. You could make the case that Wei is biased towards Terren, because she is his wife and can thus gain power from him becoming emperor. However, for one thing, I don't think her character naturally got to the point where she should be lamenting having to kill Terren, the man who tortured her for, like, a year,

meanwhile REVELLING in being able to thwart Maro's and Sillian's plans, everything he has worked for his entire life, and subsequently not feeling any sympathy for him when he is brutally killed. It also feels like the book itself is trying to get the audience to believe that Maro is almost as bad as Terren (which I've heard people say?) and that they would be equally bad options for the throne, which just doesn't hold, because Terren is a measurably worse person than Maro and has done (and likely would continue to do) unambiguously worse things to people. There seems to be two main things that turned Wei completely against Maro: a) Maro killing his father, and b) Sillian Song betraying Wei. With point b), I can understand how this would push Wei against Sillian, and by extension Maro's cause, because she needless betrayed Wei which almost ended in her death. In regards to a), I cannot for the life of me understand why she sees this as such a uniquely awful thing for Maro to do. Its not that I think this was a good or noble action, but in the hierarchy of bad shit that people have done in this story, its nowhere near the top. She mainly takes issue with it because it shows that Maro has ambition to take the throne and will do morally reprehensible things for it. But Wei literally knows Maro's life story, so she should logically know that the majority of the reason he wants the throne isn't out of selfishness, but out of duty for his nation, and knowing that his brother is a fucking violent lunatic who would rule in tyranny. Wei also comes to the conclusion that it is not inherently evil or selfish to want power, because that power can be used to help people. For some reason, by her logic, its would be justified for her to let a violent, cruel maniac rule the nation with unlimited power and continue to hurt people so that she could have that power. But Maro killing one man, who was by all accounts a TERRIBLE person, who had essentially been on his deathbed and not even lucid for years, in order to make a play to stop his brother from becoming a savage despot is where Wei draws the line? This is what's supposed to make us see Maro as just as bad of an option for the nation as Terren? Who she described GUTTING HER FRIENDS LIKE FISH because he lost his temper. Additionally, Maro's decision to speed the emperor's death along makes practical sense for someone in his position. From his perspective, Wei has miraculously just come up with a way to kill Terren, and this is his only shot at saving the nation from a tyrannical, bloodthirsty ruler. Since their father is barely even living at this point, Terren pretty much holds all the power anyways, so what point is there in drawing this situation out for potentially years? With every passing day, the risk that Terren discovers their plot becomes greater, the risk that he kills Wei and they lose the power to kill him becomes greater. His choice is not only not that bad relatively to things Terren has done, its also just a logically smart and potentially necessary move for his goals AS WELL AS HERS. So again, I really don't know why Wei sees this as a particularly bad thing, so much so that it sways her enough to let Terren have power instead of Maro. Now, I think the ultimate conclusion she comes to, that Isan's fruit power would be the best for the nation, is the right one. I think it makes sense for her to hate Maro simply because he is a prince who failed to adequately help his starving people. Like she says in the end, she hated him before she even knew him for that reason above all others. But it is so odd, and almost a little gross to me, that she is so empathetic towards Terren in the end, because "she knows why he ended up this way," but will not extend that same empathy towards Maro, despite knowing both their life stories, and how much Maro also suffered. Is it because Terren suffered more? I may agree that he did, but again, he has also done demonstrably worse things than Maro in the present day of the story. Maro dies viscerally and unceremoniously, while Terren dies in

a delicate, emotional way. Wei takes pleasure in ruining everything Maro ever worked for, and then hardly feels anything at his death, but she is sorry she has to kill Terren. After they are both dead, in the final chapter or two, she is at least a bit more sympathetic towards Maro, but where was that during the entire climax? It just felt like selective, uneven empathy to me.
4. Wei's conclusion in the last few chapters that it doesn't matter if Tensha is invaded, because "what's the nation worth if it can't even feed its people", and "maybe those people will treat them better anyways," is deeply irresponsible, shortsighted, and unfitting for her character at this point. Wei, you've been to the Violet Heron Tower. You know the place used to be a tribute house, where Tensha offered up girls, CHILDREN, so that the opposing nation wouldn't attack. How could you possibly think the people of Tensha wouldn't suffer as much if it were militarily occupied by other nations? It would only cause a different kind of suffering.

I apologize for the length of this rant lol. I almost didn't write this because I know so many people loved this novel, and I feel a bit uncomfortable critiquing the work of a debut author so thoroughly. But its precisely because I loved so much of this book that I needed to get these thoughts out. I'm very excited to see what Shen Tao does next, because she clearly has a lot of skill as an author and is able to capture a lot of peoples' hearts (mine included). Everything said here stems from my opinions and interpretation of the book, and I'm curious to know if there's people who view these things in similar or different ways :)

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Brian McClellan’s “In the Shadow of Lightning” is the one book that finally brought back my joy for reading (appreciation post)

I wanted to share some appreciation for Brian McClellan’s latest masterpiece. After devouring both the Powder Mage and Gods of Blood and Powder series (including all the novellas) years ago, I hit a bit of a wall. Due to personal reasons, I went through a long period where I didn't pick up a single book, but this story finally reignited my passion for reading. It felt like watching an epic, cinematic adventure unfold right inside my head.

Even as a long-time fan of McClellan, this book caught me completely off guard. It follows a disgraced noble who returns to his home city to solve a mystery, only to find himself caught in a massive, empire-shaking conspiracy. I’ve always been a fan of well-crafted mysteries, and I loved the way the villains were slowly unfolding. The characters felt so authentic and relatable that I found myself racing through the pages, genuinely anxious about what would happen to them.

What really stands out is how he manages the wartime setting. McClellan is a master at balancing large-scale warfare with gritty, individual combat. The most impressive part for me is that, despite having zero personal interest or background in military history, I was absolutely captivated by those aspects of the writing. Combined with a "hard" magic system that is woven into the very fabric of the world’s economy and culture, the world-building feels incredibly solid.

If you haven't started this series yet, you're missing out. I'm already counting down the days until the second book! (aaaand it's time to re-read the Powder Mage books!)

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My first Bingo card

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Here's my first bingo card. Something of an experiment as I haven't done one of these before. I only became aware of the existence of the card late last year and didn't make any particular effort to fill in the squares until right at the end. Some of the squares may not match - I leave that to the judges - but I have at least tried to find a book which fit from the fifty or so new Fantasy books I've read in the last year.

In each case I have reviewed the books I've read on Goodreads, and have copied the reviews I wrote there below.



1. Knights and Paladins

The Mayor of Noobtown by Ryan Rimmel

My Review:

I think I came across this book in list of recommendations for those who have enjoyed Dungeon Crawler Carl. This book is a more conventional Lit RPG. In it the protagonist (Jim) finds himself in a fantasy world with RPG mechanics, and has to make his way in it.

 

I found the book moderately entertaining There is a lot of RPG mechanics - information about levels and player statistics, blow by blow descriptions of battles and such, which I didn't find terribly interesting, but the story kept my interest and it was an OK read over all. Enough to make me go straight on to the next book in the series at least.

 

 

2. Hidden Gem

Grim Tales by Edith Nesbit

My Review

A collection of seven stories, all "grim" in different ways.

 

I had a mixed reaction to the stories. Some I really enjoyed in a low key spooky sort of way (The Ebony Frame, Uncle Abraham's Romance), some had me scratching my head (The Mystery of the Semi-Detached, The Mass for the Dead), and some were the annoying sort of melodramatic story where people cause their own problems by not listening to each other (From The Dead, Man-Sized in Marble).

 

I read this by way of the Project Gutenberg edition.

 

3. Published in the 80s

Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce

My Review:

This year I came across the Fantasy Bingo in the r/fantasy subreddit and decided to see if I ticked on the boxes. To my surprise I came pretty close. One box I hadn't ticked was "80s Fantasy". I found this book on a list of well regarded fantasy from the 80s and thought I'd check it out.

 

Alanna: The First Adventure tells the story of a young girl who is sent off with her brother to be educated; he to become a knight, she to learn magic. The two decide to swap (and somehow manage to convince their guardians to go along with it), so that in this book we follow Alanna as she begins her training, first as a page and then as a squire.

 

The book is quite engaging. The difficulties faced are quite believable, especially as Alanna grows older. Nevertheless she thrives in her chosen calling, making friends as well as enemies, and finding help in unexpected places.

 

 

4. High Fashion

Witch Hat Atelier Vol 01-08 by Kamonme Shirahama

My son has been encouraging me to read this series for some time now, and I have finally got round to starting it. It is a fascinating world with magic and magical teachers, which we explore through the eyes of Coco, a girl who starts to train as a witch. The series is very well thought out, with a believable system of magic, a rich world to explore, and a range of characters both good and bad.

 

I began my read with the first four volumes, but there is plenty more to look forward to.

 

The "High Fashion" component comes from the characteristic clothes worn by witches, imbued with magical spells of various kinds

 

 

5. Down with the System

The Wheel of Osheim by Mark Lawrence

The System being overthrown is the Wheel itself, the whole system of magic which is sending the world to destruction.

 

My Review:

This book brings the Red Queen's War to an unexpectedly grandiose conclusion. The stakes of the story, and the character of the main character, grew in unexpected and very satisfying ways and I found myself thoroughly enjoying it.

 

 

6.

Impossible Places

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

My Review:

This is a curious book. I came across it in an online discussion about books that are reminiscent of the Narnia series. This book is a series of journal entries by a man known as Piranesi who lives in a mysterious series of halls which are filled with statues. Birds fly through the halls, and fish live in the waters that wash through the lower halls. We piece together the story of what is really happening though the eyes of Piranesi as he explores the halls and encounters other people.

 

It is hard to say more without giving spoilers, but this was a very enjoyable and intriguing book.

 

 

7. A Book in Parts

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by JK Rowling

(A Play in four Acts)

My Review

I read this (well, listened to an audio version) after rereading all the other Harry Potter books. This book is a script rather than a novel, and comes complete with stage directions.

 

Story wise I thought the story was OK, but it felt more like a piece of fan fiction than an actual continuation of the Harry Potter saga. There is a lot of revisiting of old material along with a lot of changes to established facts - so much so that I was almost surprised to see Rowling's name on the cover.

 

It would probably be spectacular to see on stage (if done well), but for my own part I think the Harry Potter series does just as well without it.

 

 

8. Gods and Pantheons

Codex Alera: Princeps Fury by Jim Butcher

My Review

The story continues, with most of the action in this one taking place in the land of the Canae, the doglike warrior people who live across the seas from Alera.

 

In this case thare are multiple pantheons in play, starting with Furies of the Alerans and continuing with the multiple other nations

 

 

9. Last in a Series

Codex Alera: First Lord's Fury by Jim Butcher

My Review:

In this, the final book of the Codex Alera, Tavi comes into his own as the new First Lord of Alera, defeating his enemies and forging new alliances for the future. I found that this book brought the series to a very satisfactory conclusion.

 

Without going into spoiler territory, there are many things I liked about this series. The world, with its multiple peoples and species, is well imagined. There are a lot of very likeable characters, and I was especially pleased with the various love stories which are told along the way.

 

Most satisfying is the story of Tavi, the young man who over the course of the series grows to be the first lord, forging friendships and overcoming obstacles, first through his wits and skill alone and later as he comes into his own as a furycrafter.

 

 

10. Book Club or Readalong

The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher

My Review

The start of Jim Butcher's latest series is a solid first entry to a new epic tale. We have a strange and well described world with lots of fascinating details of setting, character and technology (for want of a better word). Being book one most of these remain unexplained at the end of the book, but there is no doubt that explanations exist. My only reservation here is that the series has only two books written of a much longer series, and there is a distinct possibility it is never finished.

 

Characters are well imagined, and I very much enjoyed that talking cats form part of the cast. The story contained more action scenes than I really care for, and seemed to go from fight to battle to scuffle to military engagement almost without relief. Very well done if you like that sort of thing, but a little more than I cared for.

 

 

11. Parents

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

My Review:

My second Blake Crouch book after the excellent Recursion, this one dealing with quantum uncertainty and parallel worlds as it explores the question: what if the choices that shape your life had been made differently?  In this book the protagonist finds himself in a world where different decisions have been made, and must try to find a way back to the world where he has a wife and son.

 

While I enjoyed this book I didn't feel that

it was as good as Recursion. It felt like there were too many unanswered questions, and the ending, though satisfying to a degree, was not as completely satisfying as it might have been.

 

 

12. Epistolary

Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson

Significant portions of this book are the expeditionary journal entries.

My Review:

This was a curious book. The scenario is that in the early 20th century, all the inhabitants of Europe are suddenly replaced with a completely different biosphere, as if from an alternate version of the evolution of life. The story follows the effects this has on the wider world, the different theories made to explain it, and what is found by the various parties of explorers who investigate it. strange and thought provoking stuff.

 

 

13. Published in 2025

Absolute Superman Vol 1 by Jason Aaron

My Review:

I don't read too many comic which aren't manga, but a recent podcast episode talking about the new DC comics Absolute Universe sounded intriguing, so I decided to check out Absolute Superman. The comic retells the story of the story story of Superman, changing many things but keeping the essentials the same.

 

 

14. Author of Color

Ratman Vol 1-4 by Sekihiko Inui

I read a lot of Manga, and I hope that Japanese authors count as People of Colour.  If nt, I've missed this square.

My Review:

I came across this manga earlier in the year. In a world where super heroes keep the world safe, young Shooto Katsugari dreams of becoming one. When he is offered the chance by a mysterious stranger he accepts without hesitation - only to realise that he has just been signed up by the super villain team and not the super heroes. As the newly minted supervillain Ratman he is obliged to obey his villain overlords - but still finds a way to use his evil powers to the greater good.

 

This is an amusing twist on the regular superhero fare, and one I quite enjoyed.

 

 

15. Small Press or Self Published

Beware of Chicken 2 by  CasualFarmer

This book has been picked up by a publisher, but I am including it because I started reading the story when only the first volume was just on Royal Road, and only continued this year.

My Review:

I read this book as the continuation from Beware of Chicken. I enjoyed the first book as it was a Cosy fantasy in a Cultivation setting, showing what happened when the hero Jin Rou turned his back on the highly dangerous and cutthroat world of Cultivation and took up the simple life of a farmer. 

 

 

 

16. Biopunk

Mickey7 by Edward Ashton

Not 100% sure this meets the definition of Biopunk, but the cloning machine is definitely Bio.

My review:

I read this book after seeing the movie earlier in the year. As in usual in such cases, the book is better. While the movie delights in the various bloody deaths suffered by Mickey (17 to the book's 7) and adds an element of political satire which feels somewhat forced the book tells a much more streamlined and satisfying story, and includes a lot of detail about the history of human interstellar colonisation which is absent from the movie.

 

Quite a clever piece of science fiction.

 

 

17. Elves and Dwarves

Farming Life In Another World by Yasuyki Tsurugi

My Review:

I came across mention of this story somewhere - in an online discussion about anime, perhaps? - and read some 30 chapters of it online. A standard enough Isekai story with an overpowered protagonist and a bunch of impossibly beautiful females (including the Elves required for this card). Pleasant enough if you're into that sort of thing, but it got old pretty fast.

 

 

18. LGBTQIA+ Protagonist

The Day Tripper by James Goodhand

In this book, the LGBTQIA character is a student of the main character.  This character is alos a POC.

My Review

I came across mention of this book after looking up info about another similar book, Oona Out of Order. In this book Alex Dean, age 20, has a bright future ahead of him,

only to suffer an unfortunate turn of events. When he wakes up he is 14 years into the future and his life has fallen apart. Each day he awakens in a different time. Over the course of the book he must what is going on, why has his life turned out so badly, what has happened to the people he loves, and can he fix it?

 

An engaging and clever exploration of time, life, love, and the importance of small choices.

 

19. Five Short Stories

The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu

My Review:

I read this book after watching the TV series Pantheon which is based on some of the stories in this volume. Like any collection. my reaction varies. For the most part the stories are near future science fiction stories dealing with things like mind uploading and the technological singularity, but there are other stories both science fiction and fantasy.

 

An interesting collection and one I would (mostly) recommend.

 

 

20. Stranger in a Strange Land

The Antventure Bgins by  RinoZ

My Review:

Not sure where I came across mention of this book (probably an online discussion on Reddit) but it proved to be an amusing little piece of LitRPG about a young man who suddenly finds himself in the body of an ant monster in a world with RPG like mechanics. A lot of time is spent on game mechanics and there are a lot of battles (especially towards the end) but it kept my interest enough to keep listening to the end, and probably to at least one more of the many sequels.

 

 

21. Recycle a Bingo Square (2025: First in a Series)

Codex Alera: Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher

My Review:

I was recently challenged to read this book by a friend after we had been discussing Jim Butcher's other series, The Dresden Files, which he is a big fan of and I have not taken to. This series apparently results from a challenge made to Butcher that he could not write a good book based on the "Lost Roman Legion" cliché. This he has done, and with Pokémon thrown in to boot.

 

In this book we have a Roman-inspired world in which people have skills with "Furies", elemental being with powers of air, earth, fire, water, wood or metal. Fury Crafters can use these elemental powers in combat or in daily life.

 

This story is engaging and well told. We have plots and counter plots, a wide cast of characters and some very well executed world building. I am very much taken with this series and will definitely be reading the rest of them.

 

 

22. Cozy SFF

DragonSinger by Anne McCaffrey

My Review:

The second part of of the story of Menolly, begun in Dragonsong, sees her taking up residence in the Harpers Hall and follows the first week of her life there as she finds her place in her new home.

 

This book would probably classify as cosy fantasy. Stakes are not high, not a whole lot happens, but we enjoy getting to know the characters a bit better and explore a new place.

 

 

23. Generic Title

Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey

My Review:

I was given a copy of this one by a friend (thanks Brad!) and found it an enjoyable read. Nothing particularly complex here or high stakes, just a fairly simple story about a young woman who runs away from home looks after a clutch of singing lizards.

 

My main gripe is that the story feels very short and barely seems to have got going before it is over, but since it is part one of series I guess I can forgive that.

 

24. Not a Book

Beauty and the Beast (Musical) by  Tim Rice

For my "Not a Book" I took part in a community theatre production of the Disney Beauty and the Beast, playing Maurice.  In this case I have an external review:

https://theatrehaus.com/2026/01/beauty-and-the-beast-brisbane-musical-theatre/

 

25. Pirates

The Olympian Affair by Jim Butcher

Not sea pirates, but air pirates.

My Review:

he second book of the Cinder Spires series. This one started a bit slow. The first part was a little confusing and did not really hold my interest, but it picked up in the second half with a few spectacular battles and some

clever plot twists. We learn more of the world, though there is still a lot more to learn about it. The news that the third volume of the series is coming out later this year is welcome.

 

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