psocoptera

Short stories:

Wire Mother, Isabel J. Kim, Clarkesworld.

Tell Them a Story to Teach Them Kindness, B Pladek, Lightspeed.

The Repairers of Reality, Shaenon K. Garrity, Drabblecast.

10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days, Samantha Mills, Uncanny.

Six People to Revise You, J.R. Dawson, Uncanny.

Novelettes:

The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For, Cameron Reed, Reactor.

Phantom View, John Wiswell, Reactor.

The Twenty-One Second God, Peter Watts, Lightspeed.

Barnacle, Kate Elliott, Reactor.

Saltcrop, Yume Kitasei, 2025 science fiction novel. Two sisters in a post-collapse near future sail in search of the third. By description this sounded like something I would be into but I wouldn't have finished it if I hadn't been reading it for a book club; I just never wanted to know that much what was going to happen next. There was one cool vivid scene on the boat with unexpected music and an aurora and phosphorescent whales, I liked that. And I guess I'm interested in different takes on this kind of world and this was one.

A Song for You & I, K. O'Neill, 2025 graphic. Beautifully drawn and colored coming-of-age fantasy in which a pegasus-riding trainee ranger befriends a violin-playing shepherd and mutual personal growth ensues. Quiet, simple, and lovely, perfect for fans of Kiki's Delivery Service or maybe Blue Delliquanti's Across a Field of Starlight.

Strange Bedfellows, Ariel Slamet Ries, 2025 graphic. Also YA; a college dropout in a good-future space colony ("utopian" feels more laden than I want to say here) develops a late-blooming superpower to bring things from his dreams into reality, including his high school crush. A terrific premise that didn't always work for me, especially reading it right after Song for You & I. They're very similar books at the core - two young people whose interaction helps each of them figure out what's holding them back - but felt very different to read, in a couple of ways.

Song is, like I mentioned, beautiful - it's set in a medieval-ish world that values harmony with nature, and drawn with a lot of attention and panel space given to scenery, from big vistas to close-ups of specific birds or plants, Miyazaki-style, a slow detailed richness of the world around the characters that gives the characters more emotional weight. Very peaceful and relaxing to read. Bedfellows, on the other hand, is in a very busy high-tech future, and the art reflects that - crowded pages, crowded panels, crowd scenes, a couple of different ensembles of secondary characters, inclusion of text elements like search results and chats and social media (some of which was so low-contrast I skimmed over it rather than squinting to read every word). An effective match of content and style - but *a lot*, sometimes to the point of being overwhelming.

And then also, Song is very, very chaste - the big romantic climax is a kiss on the cheek - which felt reasonable for the Miyazaki-like tone and possibly middle-grade audience. Bedfellows, on the other hand, is also weirdly chaste, with a Big Deal being made out of a couple of kisses, and... it just felt off to me? Like, yes, Not Everything Has To Be Porn, but something felt infantilizing to me about the way the relationships of these nominally college-aged young adults were rendered suitable for a younger-YA audience. Dreams are such fertile territory for the weird, the disturbing, the unsanitized, the id, but here they're pastel, quirky, dragons and unicorns. There was a one-off line about the idea of making out with your own dream-projection being masturbatory that felt particularly prudish, like, what's wrong with that, exactly? I'm sure not everybody would immediately fuck their dream of their high school crush if they projected that dream into reality but would a twenty-year-old really be scandalized by the *idea*? It felt like the kind of pearl-clutching neo-puritanism you sometimes get on Tumblr, the "there is s*x here MINORS LOOK AWAY" nonsense, and I think I personally would have found this book more interesting if it was a little more visceral. Get some horniness into those dreams, and a little horror too, maybe, or a more adult take on the whole idea, generally. Made me really appreciate that Simplicity and Other Jay & Eve didn't shy away from sex (and in the case of Simplicity, some very non-pastel dreams about desire and monsters from the id). I mean, there's nothing wrong with Young Adult! Every book its reader! I just thought it was a neat story (it was a neat story, a nice satisfying plot) and I would have liked it if it was catering a little bit more to me. :)

ETA: Also I'm fascinated by the way Song and Bedfellows and Flip all use climactic or major-turning-point dance sequences to convey intimacy and joyous catharsis. Something about how the silence and stillness of the comics page leaves a big space for the reader to "complete the scene" filling in the implied music and motion thus heightening the emotional impact from that reader investment, I don't know.

A Garden of Spheres, Linnea Sterte, 2025 graphic. I read maybe 100-120 pages of this and it was very pretty but I had no idea what was going on and I felt disconnected rather than intrigued. I don't mind slow and I don't mind having to work a little but I think I need a little more of a thread to follow. :/

I still hope for another round of Annual Take Advantage Of My Best Friend's Comic Purchasing Day, but in my first pass at sitting in her living room and reading her books, I enjoyed:

The Other Jay & Eve, Emma Jayne, 2025 graphic. What if you and your roommate got duplicated for money and then you met up with your duplicates and then you found out they were *engaged*. An obviously instantly compelling premise with good execution, although I initially felt like it didn't reach a satisfying conclusion, but on further reflection I think it worked, and definitely worthwhile overall.

Who Killed Nessie?, Paul Cornell and Rachel Smith, 2025 graphic. A murder mystery at a convention for mythological creatures, which one newbie hotel worker has been left by her coworkers to staff. Fun premise and a bunch of the joke made me laugh.

Testament, J. Marshall Smith, 2025 graphic. A nun and a caretaker robot, the last survivors of a one-way mission of planetary exploration, contemplate their situation. This is exactly the sort of thing I like - space nuns, quiet sad thinky stuff about how space exploration might really work and who would do it and what it would be like, beautifully illustrated alien biology. Recommended to fans of To Be Taught If Fortunate, Scavengers Reign, and maybe anyone who remembers whatever that Robert L. Forward novel with the one-way mission was.

Hi! This is a big post of what I've read and am reccing so far, combining stories that I read during the year and liked, stories I picked up from other people's rec lists/eligibility posts/etc, and stories I read from the Locus list here. I have not yet read everything on the Locus list, nor have I gone through the TOCs of all my favorite magazines looking for stuff, so hopefully I'll have a few more posts. But I wanted to post these to get started. These are vaguely alphabetical by magazine, and I've divided out stuff that's on the Locus list and stuff that wasn't, so that people who have already gone through the Locus list can easily find the other ones. A few standouts or likely nominees in bold.

Short stories on the Locus list:

Wire Mother, Isabel J. Kim, Clarkesworld. I think this is my personal frontrunner; this is really good.

Missing Helen, Tia Tashiro, Clarkesworld. Divorce and clones.

The Year the Sheep God Shattered, Marissa Lingen, Diabolical Plots. A small fantasy about art and magic and growing up.

35/F/Lane's Creek, Oklahoma, Hans Ege Wegner, Escape Pod. Remote work and connection.

Toothpaste Feelings, Sharang Biswas, khōréō. Symbiont, adjustment.

Tell Them a Story to Teach Them Kindness, B Pladek, Lightspeed. AI in the classroom. Sadly probably prescient.

Courtney Lovecraft's Book of the Dead, Sam J. Miller, Nightmare. A drag queen medium does a podcast.

Woodpecker, Warbler, Mussel, Thrush, Ruth Joffre, PodCastle. Extinction, birder grief.

Pandora's Formula, Hannah Yang, Strange Horizons. I don't think the world would last a day in this scenario but I thought the story was good.

Short stories not on the Locus list:

Autonomy, Meg Elison, Clarkesworld. Self-driving cars.

In the Shells of Broken Things, A.T. Greenblatt, Clarkesworld. Disability, community.

Laser Eyes Ain't Everything, Effie Seiberg, Diabolical Plots. The superhero union building isn't ADA compliant.

The Repairers of Reality, Shaenon K. Garrity, Drabblecast. Art and humanity and meaning.

Question 3, Cliff Jerrison. Democracy!

All That Means or Mourns, Ruthanna Emrys, Reactor. Fungal symbiosis and human connection.

Murder in the Clavist Autonomous Zone, Rich Larson, Strange Horizons. This is about a small intentional community inside a techno-dystopia we only see secondhand; some nice worldbuilding and character work in a small space.

10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days, Samantha Mills, Uncanny. This one has a lot of buzz and I would have said was the frontrunner except for its surprising omission from the Locus list.

Novelettes on the Locus list:

A Random Walk Through the Goblin Library, Chris Wilrich, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. NOVELETTE. Like fantasy Godel Escher Bach.

The Twenty-One Second God, Peter Watts, Lightspeed. NOVELETTE. Hive minds.

Regarding the Childhood of Morrigan, Who Was Chosen to Open the Way, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Reactor. NOVELETTE. This one is weird and I have mixed feelings but it's interesting to see what Rosenbaum is up to.

After the Invasion of the Bug-Eyed Aliens, Rachel Swirsky, Reactor. NOVELETTE. Vignettes from various different perspectives.

Phantom View, John Wiswell, Reactor. NOVELETTE. Illness and care and ghosts.

Novelettes not on the Locus list:

The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For, Cameron Reed, Reactor. NOVELETTE. Sort of a Cyteen riff.

Honeyeater, Kathleen Jennings, 2025 Australian Gothic novel. (I might have thought novella but I found an interview where she said it was a novel.) I was not super into this - at first I was like "what even is happening" and then as it became a little clearer I was like "but *why* is any of this happening". The most interesting bit was a minor character whose story I wished we were in instead. I would like to see all those birds, though.

Starstrike, Yoon Ha Lee, 2025 ya sf, second in a trilogy that started with Moonstorm. I liked Moonstorm a lot but unfortunately this one didn't work for me. Interesting things are still going on but the writing felt scattered and muddled and I rarely had any sense of anticipation or direction. I may still check out the eventual third book - I would still like to see how things turn out for the characters, and it seems quite possible that Lee will re-find his groove or the structure of the third book will flow better or whatever the problem was - but as of this one I can't really recommend the series. :(

What Stalks the Deep, T. Kingfisher, 2025 novella. Damn this one was good; I did not intend to finish it last night but I couldn't put it down. I had some mixed feelings about the second one and I liked this one better as a sequel to the first one, so, I would not abandon the series at two, is my recommendation! Spoilers: ( Read more... )

Murder By Memory, Olivia Waite, 2025 SF mystery novella. Fun, and a fast read, but I wanted to like this more than I actually did, alas. SPOILERS: ( Read more... )

It's amazing how much faster reading goes when the book is good. Also when stuck in a car for hours. Have a book roundup.

Cinder House, Freya Marske, 2025 novella. Marske continues to be writing as if aiming for me personally; this is a Cinderella retelling and it is fun and clever and different and well-put-together, definitely recommended if you like that sort of thing.

Don't Sleep With the Dead, Nghi Vo, 2025 novella. Vo wasn't done with Gatsby, or felt Nick wasn't done with Gatsby; I didn't feel like this added much.

This Princess Kills Monsters, Ry Herman, 2025 novel. Back to fairytale retellings. This was so fun and funny and successfully meta, also recommended.