When We Were Real, Daryl Gregory, 2025 sf novel. Comedy-drama about an alternate world otherwise like our own that has been informed, several years prior to the start of the novel, that they are a simulation; the novel tells the story of a group of people taking a bus tour of physics-denying Impossibles that show ways that the simulation has been or can be manipulated. Gregory takes a goofier tone than someone like Greg Egan might (although there is also very much some big violence in the climax) - this is closer to John Scalzi, although not so page-turny. Gregory's character work felt a little pre-fab - there's a computational neuroscientist/programmer who is "trying to cure Alzheimer's, autism, schizophrenia" in the way that movie scientists are all-purpose science things experts, a Marvel comics writer aging dudebro (on the one hand, it's weird for me to read things like "the craft of writing comics... bored the shit out of most wives and girlfriends" when for me the world of comics mostly *is* "wives and girlfriends" (some with wives or girlfriends themselves) and on the other hand I'm sure I would also be bored if I had to listen to this dude talk), an indecisive rabbi, teens who are dumb and annoying and dangerous. But there's a neat little thought experiment about the chance to take a break in a pocket universe, and while I might wish he had thought a little more deeply or clearly about subjectivity and narrative and entertainment, it was enough of a conclusion/punchline for the weight of the book.

Harmattan Season, Tochi Onyebuchi, 2025 noir-fantasy novel. I didn't give this the fairest possible shake as I kind of lost track of its due date and ended up skimming heavily past a certain point, but I had been struggling with it before then. Sometimes I enjoy it when authors don't explain and define and just expect you to pick it up and figure it out, or, you know, are writing for an audience who is not you and you get to enter into their context-of-assumptions for a bit, but, man, I don't know, where are we, when are we, what should I be picturing this place is like, what do all these words mean, what's going on, what am I hoping for or anticipating here, how should I be feeling about this, I need *something*. Was that whole bit where the street kid was describing a possible heist a satire or spoof or were we supposed to take that seriously. Possibly if someone made a movie of it and had to visually specify the place and time and give us music and lighting mood clues I would be like oh this is an amazing story actually? (And I feel like it would make a really good movie? Sending this wish out into the world...)

Copperscript, KJ Charles, 2025 romance novel. Having just read several of these I wasn't going to indulge again so soon, but then I got it from the hold queue, and then I ended up in a Direct Tire for a couple of hours and was like "am I going to use this time to make progress on the book I am bogged down in? no I am not", so here we are. This one is back to the post-WWI timeframe like Think of England (but I don't think had any character cameos)? A police detective gets involved with a handwriting analyst with supernatural-level powers of handwriting insight. I thought Charles did a nice job walking the line of "this *is* unlikely, the characters are aware of that, and in fact that skepticism drives a bunch of the plot" and "it works exactly how it needs to for plot purposes". Fun!

Katabasis, RF Kuang, 2025 fantasy novel about magic grad school and Hell. I was really into this at the start and then at some point in the middle it started to lose me and never quite got me back. If you are looking for 2025 adult fantasy takes on the magic school trope I would recommend The Incandescent over this one, although this one might land better if you're particularly a Dante fan, I couldn't say. (I know only the basics and have never read it.) Heads up for animal harm, child harm, and suicidality.

A bunch more behind the cut, discussing my three (maybe three and a half) problems with the book. ( Read more... )

Metal From Heaven, August Clarke, 2024 fantasy novel. I am not shy about how much I like a book with momentum and this is definitely not one - after a promising (and intense) opening, I spent a good two-thirds of it slogging my way through. It took until midpoint for anything like a plot trajectory to develop (along with a sudden dump of new characters) and I don't even know now what the hell was happening between 10% and 50% and why there was so much of it. And then even when the plot emerged, it was disjointed and muddled. But! I can't simply disrecommend it, because there's good stuff here too. It's a big ambitious book and I appreciate that; Clarke does some nice work with details of setting and place and aesthetic; when the geopolitical plot shows up, this is the kind of book where all the world's key players happen to be queer women and that doesn't feel forced. If you get tired of cozy and its sometimes-lean into twee, this is a book where people are messy to the point of being awful, and sex might be a way of genuinely wanting to hurt each other (or hurt oneself). There was a wildly funny gonzo sequence around the 80% mark that felt worth a lot of the slog and then a development around 90% that gave the last arc of the book all the motivation and urgency that had been missing. Recommended for fans of Catherynne Valente, the Locked Tomb series, and people who are faster readers than me, who will take fewer weeks wading through the slow parts.

Spoilers: ( Read more... )

Hemlock & Silver, T Kingfisher, 2025 fantasy novel. My hold queue really did me a solid giving me this book this weekend, exactly in time to have enough of it left to keep me company through three hours of waiting my turn for voir dire this morning. Perfect to have an effortless-to-read, entertaining page-turner (in contrast to my other current book, which might turn out to be good but is not effortless). Like I often say, I like Vernon's stuff and this was one (particularly the "breaking a fairytale down for parts and rebuilding it into something new" kind of thing, although also structurally a lot like what she does in her contemporary horror). It was cinematic and inventive and I liked the protagonist and definitely recommend it if you like Vernon.

Also I am now on a jury for the next two weeks.

Where the Axe Is Buried, Ray Nayler, 2025 science fiction novel. Some interesting stuff going on here, but it didn't quite come together in the end for me; I went back and did some rereading which helped, but I continue to have various issues with this book which I am of course going to talk about at length as I do, behind the cut.

( Read more... )

Anyways. Interesting book and I'll be curious to see whether it makes the Hugo ballot with his related novella having just won.

Wanted, A Gentleman, KJ Charles, romance. (Not actually sure if it was a novel or novella.) I'm behind on writing up books so I'm doing them easiest-post-first instead of chronologically. The publisher of a personal-ads newspaper teams up with a formerly enslaved businessman to find the eloping daughter of the latter's former enslavers, with a lot of attention to what it might have felt like to be trying to make long rapid journeys by stagecoach. Charles is so good at making her characters people (and people who I feel like I haven't met before, even if they are also tropey or types).

A Drop of Corruption, Robert Jackson Bennett, 2025 fantasy, sequel to The Tainted Cup. Perfect for a tedious transatlantic flight, a nice mix of mystery, world-details, and character stuff about the central detective pair. I hadn't particularly been reading it as commentary on anything and then got to the author's note, in which RJB made it clear that he was writing against certain trends in real life and also recent trends in fantasy (( Read more... )) and I thought it was interesting the way Incandescent was also an answering back to a work with undue cultural dominance. I mean, I suppose in one sense everything is always responding to something else, but it was an interesting coincidence to read two back-to-back that were more starkly so.

Asunder, Kerstin Hall, 2024 fantasy novel. Really good - compelling worldbuilding, vivid characters, a strong central premise and interesting episodes around that. She's currently working on the sequel and I will be eagerly awaiting it. Old and new powers, some more eldritch and demonic than others, an involuntary soulbond/possession situation, several weird forms of transportation. Recommended to people who liked Perdido Street Station but would like something Mieville-free and woman-centered, or... I'm flailing for a good comparison here. Martha Wells' new fantasy series maybe.

Rules for Ghosting, Shelly Jay Shore, 2024 novel. I was still playing Hugos hooky, after also reading two-thirds of Asunder which got interrupted when my ebook expired, but I have a paper copy as of this afternoon so expect to hear about that soon. I came across this book in a couple of different contexts (a book group I'm not in but am adjacent to was reading it, etc) and was intrigued - queer (m/m) romance, literal ghosts, Jewish funeral customs? Sure! If that sounds good to you you will probably also enjoy it, although I felt like it was stronger as a family drama in some ways than as a romance - it almost felt like some of the early "getting to know each other" scenes might have been deleted for length, since there was a kind of weird jump to them knowing more about each other than had happened on the page. Pluses: learning about taharah and shmira, interesting low-key take on including paranormal elements. Minuses: dog squick (really hard for me to enjoy a schmoopy scene of the couple kissing and cuddling if one of them just kissed his dog, ew ew ew), author mentioned in a Q&A at the back of the book that she was picturing one of the couple as an actor whose face I hate, which kind of ruined the ship for me tbh. I mean, at least I had already finished the book, but it killed any post-romance-novel afterglow. Maybe don't read the Q&A if you have any actors whose faces you hate. Could be a plus or minus: I am not qualified to evaluate how good a job Shore did writing in a trans POV, but it seemed reasonable to me? But also seems plausible that a review by a transmasc person might point out things I wouldn't catch? (Shore herself is a she/they person.)