u/C0smicoccurence

... and not in a romantic way, either. It’s just slowwwwww and an absolute fucking delight. This is one of the more popular Royal Road stories out there, and it has kept me grounded during the past two months of craziness! This is what I’m staying up at night reading. I dove back in as a distraction, rereading from the beginning, only to decide I was going to keep going … and going … and going. Now that I am caught up with this serial, here’s my sales pitch.

The Premise:
Alien wizards have made a contract with Earth: we give you superpowers in exchange for being able to summon (and generously pay) said superhumans for various services, including hunting demons, cooking a formal meal, or dressing up as a mythological figure and serving cocktails. Anyways, Alden thorn is a kid whose parents were killed by a supervillain. So when he’s chosen, he wants to be a support hero focused on preventing collateral damage.

Read if You Like: slow burns, intense platonic friendships, lovable characters, explorations of mental health, light Video Game elements

Avoid if You Dislike: a single day to span several dozen chapters, tonal shifts between intense existential dread and lighthearted action slice-of-life

Queer SFF: probably just coming out (asexual) but likely not as much of a focus as I'd have liked for this square. The same conversation made me think that Alden's probably on the aromantic spectrum, but that's less clear to me. Depending on your reading, it may also qualify for Aro Paro.

r/Fantasy Bingo: Self Published, Unusual Transport (HM), Game Changer, Vacation Spot, Published in 2026 (serialized, so only if you read to 'current' chapters), Feast Your Eyes on This (a few, but Thanksgiving is a major event).

​

The Pacing:
It’s tough to write a review of Super Supportive without talking about story progression. This story is about as much of a slow burn as you can possibly get. I’d primarily describe this series as slice-of-life in a Superhero world. While Sleyca does occasionally throw Alden into intense, high pressure situations, the majority of this series follows Alden attending classes, decorating his dorm room, and on phone calls with his friends from Earth and other planets. When Alden’s life is busy, or when he’s pondering big decisions, you’ll get many chapters following the same event, conversation, or visit.

A common complaint from people who don’t enjoy this series as much as me is that nothing happens. I happily disagree with that assessment. I actually feel like a ton of stuff happens, but relatively little of it (by word count) is what we’d consider a traditional plot. You do get some classic plot beats – such as Alden facing down and defeating a school bully – but they’re stretched out over far longer stretches of time than I’m used to seeing in traditional novels. Even things that were hinted at from the beginning of the series, such as the mysterious alien who works/is imprisoned in Chicago whom becomes Alden’s friend and early mentor, get mentioned often enough that it never feels like truly important plot elements have been forgotten about. There’s also plenty of room for chapters that simply trace the path of Alden’s life, such as dorm parties, shopping for Christmas presents, and going through ‘intake’ into the superhuman community, all of which get several chapters of attention. It turns what could be throwaway moments into time worthy of attention, and I found Sleyca almost always finds a way to link the small moments in Alden’s life to characterization (of Alden or side characters), thematic development, or planting seeds for future plotlines. It’s remarkably well-balanced for something that crawls along at a snail’s pace.

This is a series that I can only recommend to people who enjoy the journey, and aren’t in a hurry to get there. As I’m caught up and will wait on the releases (a few chapters each month) we’ll see if I maintain contact with Super Supportive, or if I need to step away from it for a while to let it build up a backlog of chapters for me to read all at once. However, I truly think that the rewards of this series are worth the wait. I also enjoy most of the worldbuilding and plot elements that Sleyca chose to work with though, which probably makes the slow burn more enticing for me than others.

Alden as a Protagonist:
If I have any criticism of the series, it might be that Alden is a bit on the perfect side. He is the classic selfless hero, unrelentingly kind, willing to risk himself for others, and with a strong ethical compass. Even when he could enact petty vengeance, he rarely chooses that path, and he keeps making choices that mean that he’s nothing particularly unlikable about him. Hell, he’s also the only superhero school candidate who isn’t on social media. He’s the easiest type of character to cheer for, which can sometimes sap the love out of a story (for me).

To be clear, I like Alden a lot, and Sleyca makes a bunch of chocies that mean I’m not constantly annoyed at how unrelentingly kind and good Alden is. Actually, he’s a remarkably three-dimensional version of a goodie-two-shoes. He grapples with traumatic experiences which Sleyca spends a lot of time showing how he works through those memories and tries to heal. He’s got little quirks that make him endearing – such as his love of preserving ice cream with his skill to keep it from melting, or of rugs with excessive amounts of fluff. Yes he jumps into danger for others, but he also spends a lot of down-time considering what type of person he wants to be, and his decisions are sometimes driven by fear, frustration, and pride. I recently dropped The Noss Saga, a gay epic fantasy that should have been perfect for me, in part because of a too-perfect protagonist who always did the right thing no matter what. I haven’t felt that urge with Super Supportive, which is a sign that annoying (to me) tropes can be enjoyable when executed well.

From a Progression Fantasy perspective, I think Alden is a roaring success. He’s got the Rabbit Class, which was designed by the alien wizards to be easily summonable for as servants. His skill was sold to him as ‘Let Me Carry Your Luggage’ but the alien name is closer to ‘The Bearer of All Burdens’, which essentially lets him put objects and people into statis. Sleyca finds all sorts of creative applications for this across many settings, and seeing Alden grow from struggling with using his skill while standing still to freezing tennis balls that where thrown at him by a Superhero (and returning them with their motion from the original throw) is a really satisfying arc. You’ll get a lot of time with Alden exploring his powers, and with him grappling with the idea that a huge part of his ‘soul’ was linked to the idea of carrying the burdens of others. Like the rest of the series, these elements are a slow burn, but very worth it.

Side Characters & Relationships:
This is the thing that I think catapults Super Supportive into something truly special. Sleyca does not slack off on developing side characters. This series has a huge cast (friends/family from before, classmates, important superhumans, various Aliens), and almost all of them get attention at some point or another. Take Jeffy. Jeffy should be extremely annoying. He’s a fellow student who took an Aquaman-style class because it was guaranteed to get him into superhero school. He’s got a blue mohawk, no common sense, and is initially used as comic relief by doing extraordinarily stupid shit (including shouting ‘LAND MOVES’ when he punches someone). However, he also has deep conversations with Alden about how he doesn’t want to get summoned to work in the deep ocean, and that he’s worried the path professors have charted out for him will make him unhappy. He starts an impromptu grilling livestream while on a video-call with his grandparents. In a shorter series, or one more focused on plot, Jeffy would have never become more than a one-liner to release tension. As it stands, he’s still a relatively unimportant side character, but he’s also gotten love and attention and development. And he’s one example from a small ocean of people I could talk about.

Another bright spot is that Sleyca prioritizes developing platonic friendships more than I’ve seen most authors do. The low-hanging fruit here are his roommates in school or the other Rabbit Class superhumans he met during intake as he was introduced to super-society. However, his relationship with Stuart is perhaps the most well-developed male/male friendship I’ve read in speculative fiction. Stuart is an alien, the son of the most powerful Knight who fights chaos, is neurodivergent-coded (though this looks different in alien cultures than ours), and plans to become a Knight himself. At first I got frustrated with how much time Sleyca devoted to their time together. I like magic schools and wanted to get back to the fun gym classes! However, this friendship keeps paying off the further Sleyca dives into things. I have cried multiple times at their conversations – rare for me – and it’s a strong enough relationship that I have to keep reminding myself that they’re good friends and not in a romantic relationship. It’s hard to turn off my desire to see gay relationships in books, but holy shit is this friendship handled well.

Worldbuilding
At first, I was not in love with the combination of wizards and superheroes. The aliens have entered in a magical contract with humans (and several other planet’s citizens) to grant powers in exchange for service. They’ve also given Earth a System, a worldwide AI that allows for, amongst other things, your brain to be a cell phone. But only if you are one of the few humans who got chosen. The alien wizards do magic, and the way Sleyca develops that magic in relation to the superhero powers is really fascinating. The alien elements ramp up more and more as the series goes on, and it’s a really fun culture and governmental setup that is different from ours. It isn’t perfect – there’s a good amount of wizard and alien supremacy happening that the aliens don’t quite realize they believe in – but having short humanoid aliens who can split their brains in half, party hard enough for orgies to be relatively unremarkable (we never see these, just know that they’re part of the culture), and take learning and education very seriously from a cultural standpoint. They’re human enough to be notable – this is actually a relevant plot point, as there were strong objections to making Earth, with a species so similar to them, a vassal planet – but alien enough to not really feel human.

And the human superho stuff is just as intriguing! Humanity decided the supers needed to live on an island away from the rest of humanity, except those who take jobs with cities to be professional superheros (whose job is mostly chasing down other gifted humans who refused to move to the island as a teenager when their powers manifested). It’s a fun little inversion of how super stories normally go, and also not the same deconstruction that’s been given a million times. Sleyca’s efforts to build up the culture of Anedesoria and its super-inhabitants is far deeper than he ever needed to go. There’s a whole 10 chapter arc about rich superhero prep schools for kids who don’t have powers yet, and I was glued to the story the entire time.

I haven’t mentioned the crazy vending machines, the original generation of supers who have their hands in a million pies, Super Humans At Large, or any other number of details. Sleyca’s setting smashes a bunch of elements together (sci fi, video game terminology, superheros, magic, school) and they shouldn’t mix. Truly this series is better than the sum of its parts.

Conclusion: a full-throated recommendation for anyone at all interested in a slow burn slice of life with expansive characterization and strong platonic friendships

Want More Reviews Like This? try my blog Marked For Plot

It’s no secret to those who’ve been in my orbit for a while that How to Survive this Fairytale is one of my absolute favorite books. So, when Hallow dropped her next book, I knew I was going to have to pick it up. Halls of the Dead is a very different reading experience, and I didn’t jive with it quite as much. However, the through-lines between these two books (relentlessly queer, unconventional takes on common tropes, and unusual structural choices) is something I’m very interested in, so Hallow remains on my list of authors whose release schedule I will be avidly following.

The Premise:
Irene is the first necromancer to perform a resurrection since Jesus himself. She brought back her love, Agnes, with the help of her husband John. John is himself ancient, sworn to keep the necromantic arts alive despite not practicing them himself. This story weaves these three characters’ past and present, tangling them together in a desperate knot as they try to secure a future for the necromantic arts. It’s a horror/fantasy hybrid about gore, necromancy, and revenge.

Read if You Like: magic that doesn’t shy away from grime, literal beetles inside your stomach, character-focused stories, getting lost in the language

Avoid if You Dislike: another book in Victorian London, bugs, stories that de-prioritize plot, frequent flashbacks

Reading Challenge: Queer Families, Protagonist over 40, Intersectional Cubed

r/Fantasy Bingo: The Afterlife (HM), Older Protagonist, Published in 2026, Feast Your Eyes on This (human flesh, mostly)

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What Worked For Me:
If you thought that the necromancy in The Locked Tomb was good and grotesque, buckle up. Hallow holds no prisoners in The Halls of the Dead. This is a book about necromancy, full stop. You get tidbits of how illusion and transmutation work (they’re even interesting), but Hallow has let her imagination run wild when it comes to the necromantic arts. It turns out that her imagination is not lacking in gore. We start with Irene knee deep in mud as she unearths Agnes from her grave. She mutilates her hand – in great detail – to power the resurrection spell, the spell she got from a book created from the folded up body of a previous necromancer, a woman who now whispers in Irene’s ear. There is blood and bugs everywhere. Things only get more intense Hallow forges ahead. The book is littered with the filthy acts of necromancy. It’s not hard to understand why society has deemed it a dark art, because Hallow makes the visuals so entrancingly repulsive. I could pull description after description of all the cool stuff happening on this front. If you’re at all interested in a more gruesome and realistic – whatever that means when it comes to magic – take on necromancy, I can’t think of any book better than this one. It is decadent and indulgent and unrepentant.

Saint John is himself a product of necromancy. He’s a corpse stuffed with his own grave-dirt. Created and reanimated by the Abbot of a necromantic monastery called the Crypt, St. John now lives forever. That man, John’s first love, killed and immortalized John to a live where he hosts beetles and worms and blowflies in a body that neither breathes nor bleeds. His reanimation flashback featured a particularly impactful scene where the abbot, elbow deep into John’s body, caresses the ribs of Johns’ body while casting the spell. Literal shivers. In his backstory we see the necromancers he’s failed to protect, the vengeance he has wrecked upon his enemies, and his single-minded devotion to Irene, whom he sees as the path to finishing his divine mission, even as he begins to develop real (perhaps) feelings for both her and Agnes.

The language in this book is one to get lost in. I think some may find it too purple, I don’t think Hallow overplays her hand. There were so many moments while I paused to reread a passage to enjoy Hallow’s writing. One of my favorites featured John – can you tell he’s my favorite? – as he describes his own creation

>My beloved made me into a grave. My own grave, yes. But the graves of others, too. I am where necromancers go when they die; I am the earth that remembers them. He made me into a cathedral where the future could worship the past. He made me the link between the living and the dead.

This formal and ritualistic language wends its way throughout the book. I think it matches the setting of the story and how Hallow approaches necromancy as itself a ritualistic type of magic. The prose here made me seriously begin to rethink my aversion to annotating my own books.

What Didn’t Work for Me:
As I read The Halls of the Dead, I struggled with figuring out why I wasn’t itching to continue reading. I aim for 50 pages per day, but it was rare that I felt any inclination to read past that mark with The Halls of the Dead, which seemed very at odds with how much I enjoyed the language. I think there are two primary culprits. The first is pacing. Chapters flit back and forth across character perspectives and time. We dip into different pasts, flit to the present as they deal with the fallout of the resurrection (and plot the downfall of the various evil men in their lives), but all this bouncing means that the plot of the story feels disjointed and meandering. The setting, vibes, and prose carried me a long way, but they couldn’t keep me fully engaged. Once the final act of the story approached, this was alleviated, and my motivation to read picked up.

I also just found Irene and Agnes a little … basic, and in a character-focused story, that’s a tough pill to swallow. Maybe St. John’s weirdness, which I adored, already prejudiced me against them. However, I never felt like either of their personalities shone through, and each of their backstories largely revolved around them escaping and enacting revenge on a suite of abusive men in their lives (father, brother, judge). I didn’t feel like Hallow had much that I hadn’t seen before, and I really wanted Irene’s relationship with her sister to get a bigger focus, as there seemed a lot more thematic heft in that storyline. I also didn’t really feel Irene and Agnes’ love for each other. I didn’t buy into their unrelenting devotion, which seemed to have its origins in a prophecy and little else. Meanwhile, when St. John begins to develop true feelings for the women, I am shown that emotional shift, rather than simply being told about it.

Conclusion: gorgeous language and vivid necromancy, but not for those seeking traditional book structures

Want more Reviews Like This? Try my blog Marked for Plot

When I was browsing new releases in January, I passed over George Falls Through Time; admittedly this was mostly because the publisher dropped Ministry of Time as a comp title. I despised ... pretty much everything about that book, and it's gotten worse with time. Thankfully, this got put back on my radar via being pitched to me by one of our excellent sub mods u/OutOfEffs as an 'interior existential fuckshit novel,' which is right up my alley. It's the type of controversial book that is executed well enough to cater to very specific tastes, meaning that most people who picked this up hated it. Honestly, this is likely going this year's biggest gap (other than DNFs) between my rating of a book and the general consensus.

And honestly, I blame the marketing. It's pitched as "A confessional queer romance, a swords-and-sorcery soap opera" ... which is missing everything this book is trying to do. It is a glorious train wreck in slow motion. This is not a fun book full of whimsy and romance with a historical serf trying to find his freedom (well, there is that, but not like you're thinking). Instead, this book is the hollowness that comes when when you fixate on the pointlessness of life, the artificiality of all human connection, and the lack of agency over your own destiny. It is cyclical and frustrating and uncomfortably real.

No matter how conflicted (in a good way) I feel about this book, the sign that this review is looking to be one of my longest is a sign that this novel had lots of interesting things to say.

The Premise:
George has lost his job, his boyfriend left him, he has no sense of meaning in life, and now walks dogs. When two run away and things spiral out of control, he ends up falling into 1300s England. Honestly, this was probably the best thing that could have possibly happened. There's some business with a dragon, but the book is really about George's internal journey to find meaning in life.

Read if You Like: intense depictions of depression, speculative fiction character studies, the power of a quiet life, simple vocabulary arranged intentionally

Avoid if You Dislike: time travel light on historical detail, books that de-emphasize traditional plot structures, characters (and romances) that are hard to cheer for

QueerSFF Reading Challenge: just Coming Out, and even that isn't really a focus of the book. Just sort of incidental. They did come out in a church to a priest though, which was fun! Talk about the true beauty of stained glass

r/Fantasy Bingo Squares: Vacation Spot (maybe), Published in 2026. It sort of fits for Unusual Transportation, Explorers, and Politics, but none heavy enough that I'd use it for those squares.

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What Worked For Me:
I cannot stress enough that anyone considering reading this book should:

1. Throw away your preconceived notions of what this book is about
2. Evaluate whether you can enjoy a book about unlikable people
3. Read a free online sample of the first page or two

Collett's writing is arresting. I had a headache when I picked up this book for the first time, and got through three sentences before my brain went 'oh ... oh ... ohhhhhhh!!' You see, this book is gloriously not written in the traditional style of speculative fiction these days. It is meandering, assertive, and melodramatic. As an English teacher, I spend half my time heckling preteens about the importance of using periods, not beginning with a coordinating conjunction, and a million other rules that Collett throws out the window. He does this quite intentionally, as a way to let the prose rip its way straight into George's brain. Here's a little quote from page 3:

"This was a city where your boyfriend became your ex-boyfriend because you quit (you weren't fired, no way) your data entry office job because you were beginning to imagine arguments in your head like this, actually mutter under your breath as you walked aimlessly in circles on your lunch break and ran into people, smacked shoulders, and your boyfriend was worried about you - but only worried enough to leave you, not worried enough to stay."

Reading the sample is important, because I think you are either going to adore how Collett writes or absolutely despise it. The prose becomes more erratic the further George unmoors from reality. When he finds more grounded moments, adapting to his new situation, Collett's writing smooths out into something almost typical. The style itself is communicating things about George to the reader. That said, these choices spiked my anxiety, secondhand embarrassment, and insecurities about all the things I think are wrong with my own life. Not exactly light and fluffy reading material.

It doesn't help that George himself is either a trainwreck (if being generous) or a shit person (if being realistic). This is most apparent when he's reflecting on his life before dropping through time, where he loses himself in cocaine and corporate workplace culture, revealing a protagonist who us utterly flawed and unable to find a concrete path back towards the life he'd like. George finds himself a hollow shell, a pit of depression and self-destructive tendencies that are at their sharpest when his personal past and the 'current' past crash together. In some ways, the rather intense focus on a character's implosion reminded me a lot of Welcome to Forever by Nathan Tavares, one of my all-time favorite books. In the sea of saccharine gay men whose worst vices are grumpiness, a well-executed psychological profile of a work-in-progress was delightful. This novel got intense enough in this regard to trigger my own squeamishness and anxieties, which a sign of excellent writing.

Finally, on the subject of queerness. As with the rest of this book, there's a lot of raw emotion and frayed edges. George and Simon's love story follows very few traditional beats; anytime you find yourself rooting for the pair of them, you'll quickly sink back into feeling like there's nothing worth saving. It's a great bit of tension, and anyone wanting a Genre Romance from this should stay far, far away. George's own relationship with homosexuality is rather fraught. He sees himself outside it, like most queerness in the modern world is a set of clothes that others put on which he doesn't quite fit into. There were a lot of tidbits that spoke to my own experiences as a gay man. There's an amount of folding yourself into the stereotype - or intentionally refusing to do so - that was present in my own self-discovery and coming out. Like with the rest of this book, there's not much in the way of breezy queer joy. I don't always want something like that, but it really hit spectacularly well.

What Didn't Work for Me:
In the end, there's too much discomfort in George Falls Through Time for it to be a contender for my book of the year, or to make it on my list of favorites. Even though Collett was achieving everything he set out to do, that doesn't always make the experience fun. Actually, this novel feels very adjacent to Literary Fiction; the speculative elements mostly seem to be present to support exploring the psyche of a tortured soul. You won't find a ton of interesting spins on time travel here. There's some fun tidbits, such as George's clothing causing a stir, but ultimately you'll find little of substance to the time travel mechanics or using that plotline in gripping ways.

But what a tortured soul examination we get! Plus, Collett leverages all the simple prose and modern stylings of genre fiction to achieve this. In some ways, I find it the inverse of The Spear Cuts Through Water, which lays Literary prose techniques at the altar of Epic Fantasy plotting. Unfortunately, this cross-section of genre and literature makes George Falls Through Time a fairly specific read.

I'm also wholly unqualified to talk about this book as an adaptation of Saint George and the Dragon, which I have not read and do not (currently) intend to. Similarly, this feels like the type of time travel that wasn't rigorously researched (but this is entirely supposition on my part), and I anticipate history-buffs to be disappointed. I did learn about the gay King Edward II though; like all of the best homosexuals from history, he was a delightful bit of chaos.

Final nitpick: it is rather important in the early chapters that George is wearing athletic shorts. The polyester in particular comes up multiple times in plot-important ways. And yet, we get a pair of blue jeans on the cover. I understand that its more aesthetically appealing, but I hate it so much.

Conclusion: not for most, but for those interested in frank portrayals of unlikable people, this is hard to beat in the genre fiction space

Want More Reviews Like This? try my blog Marked For Plot 

I've been a fan of the Dungeon Crawler Carl books for years, and am thrilled they're getting so much love. When they announced a role playing game, I was both excited and also bracing myself for the worst. I'd be interested in running a campaign with my regular group (as would they), but we're not above hacking together something if the official rpg isn't good.

Most of the people I've seen talking about it are relatively new to tabletop role playing games. This is great! Love an entry point to the hobby beyond the elephant in the room. However, I was wondering if anyone here has looked it over? I've heard its got a similar chassis as Dungeon Crawl Classics, but little beyond that.

Welcome to the final discussion of The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach.

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>A police officer is murdered, brought back to life with a mysterious new power, and tasked with protecting her city from an insidious evil threatening to destroy it.

>The port city of Hainak is alive: its buildings, its fashion, even its weapons. But, after a devastating war and a sweeping biotech revolution, all its inhabitants want is peace, no one more so than Yat Jyn-Hok a reformed-thief-turned-cop who patrols the streets at night.

>Yat has recently been demoted on the force due to “lifestyle choices” after being caught at a gay club. She’s barely holding it together, haunted by memories of a lover who vanished and voices that float in and out of her head like radio signals. When she stumbles across a dead body on her patrol, two fellow officers gruesomely murder her and dump her into the harbor. Unfortunately for them, she wakes up.

>Resurrected by an ancient power, she finds herself with the new ability to manipulate life force. Quickly falling in with the pirate crew who has found her, she must race against time to stop a plague from being unleashed by the evil that has taken root in Hainak.

Bingo Squares: Unusual Transportation (HM - Puffballs, also possibly the boat), Book Club, Politics and Court Intrigue, Author of Color

Do you feel this counts for The Afterlife? I’m leaning yes, but can see arguments against it.

I’ll add a few prompts to get us started, but please feel free to add others if you’d like!

For those looking for queer recommendations for this year's bingo squares, look here.

What is the BB Bookclub? You can read about it in our introduction thread here

Other Book Clubs for Queer Books

• In October we'll be reading The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden
• In September, HEA Bookclub will be reading Yours Celestially by Al Hess
• In September, the r/QueerSFF subreddit will be reading Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
• If I missed a book club featuring queer characters or themes, ping me and I'll update this!

This book has all of the elements that typically appeal to me: it's a novella, engages with questions of linguistics and ethics, and it asks the reader to be uncomfortable. The Language of Liars blew me out of the water. The opening sections left me with the feeling that this would be a good book, worth reading and recommending, but it got better and better. Every chapter sucked me in a little bit more until I sat in bed, story finished, thinking about the ending and its implications. I was not super enthralled by the 2025 novella nominations from most major awards. The Language of Liars has the right blend of thematic ambition, accessible writing, and the backing of a traditional publisher that make it an excellent candidate for 2026, and I will be happily advocating for it to make some waves on the awards circuit this year. To anyone who likes their stories to shine a mirror on our world without being too obvious about it, this is for you. There's enough here for me to happily teach this novella in my Genre Fiction elective, and I'm desperately hoping one of the book clubs I participate in picks it up, because there's so much to talk about from the last few chapters.

Really, truly an excellent piece of writing. Plus, the book is short and straightforward enough that the content-to-time-investment ratio is one of the best I've read this year.

The Premise:
Ro is a talented linguist, hoping to be the first in generations of his species to jump into another's body. He succeeds, possessing a Star Eater who, like all of their race, mine the cosmic space dust necessary for faster than light travel. He has been trained for this moment, hoping to gather the information and skills needed to save the slow death of the universe's society, which depends on the service (exploitation?) of the enigmatic aliens.

Read if You Like: autism-coded characters, uncomfortable questions about how you (the reader) live life, musings on linguistics

Avoid if You Dislike: straightforward prose, lack of clear solutions to problems, monolithic intergalactic governments

Does it Bingo? Unusual Transportation, Published in 2026, Non-Human Protagonist (HM), Politics and Intrigue, Author of Color. I personally also counted it for Judge a Book by its Title.

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What Worked For Me:
I was in linguistic heaven for this book, especially the opening chapter, where Ro is in school as a linguist. Huang includes all sorts of translations for doubt and lying in different fictional languages, showing how they are reflective of different cultures and biological imperatives. There's musings on how translating words into another language often strips them of the deep connotative meaning of the original word. It reminded me a bit of Ken Liu's The Bookmaking Habits of Selective Species, except it anchors the explorations of alien languages in a single character's perspective, biases, and goals. Ro himself feels very autism-coded to me. However, where does the line between coding and unlabeled representation get drawn? To me, this leans into the 'depicting autism in a culture that doesn't have a label for autism' side of representation. In a lot of ways Huang handles this topic with care, such as discussing how the perceived displays of linguistic gloating were instead meant from Ro as complimentary discussion topics. After all, he assumed senior students would understand language at least as well as him. I could see accusations leveled at this book of being an autistic savant stereotype, which are overrepresented by orders of magnitude in autistic characters. All I can say is that it felt honest and earnest to me, and I reveled in Ro's love of language, a trait present even after he takes of a Star Eater body.

I didn't come into this book expecting the thematic directions it took. The blurb portrays the book as one of discovery, learning, and espionage. Instead, it delves into a species that was stripped of autonomy for its unreplaceable role in mining FTL travel materials. They are now 'full citizens', sort of, but the portrayals of them as ecstatic workaholics with no sense of individual identity are simply convenient tools to depersonify the greater universe's abuse of them. Sound familiar to our world? Ro's growing understanding of the Star Eaters was handled excellently, the sort of slow dawning horror that everything you knew was a lie. It was a delicious and smooth transition.

Like all good metaphors, Huang doesn't beat you over the head with what it all means. Similarly, they also don't limit themselves to studying legalized slavery made palatable via propaganda and distance. One of the most powerful lines in the book was when Ro was contemplating the declining reproductive rates of the Star Eaters, foreshadowing the catastrophic end of faster than light travel in a few centuries. Ro notes "Most continued to ignore such a slow death, trusting that someone, somewhere, would solve it." If that isn't an accurate representation of how we're treating our world - myself included - I don't know what is. The book also starts each chapter with a non-prose element: an interview, excerpt from a book, transcript of a meeting, etc. In some books this could be flavorful filler, but Huang leverages it to seed setting details and thematic ideas before the reader truly needs to know them, building up the story without relying on huge infodumps.

The further along the book goes, the more that Huang shifts the thematic focus to reflect the reader's evolving understanding of the situation. I won't get into specifics, because I don't think I can even obliquely reference the ideas Huang eventually reaches for without spoiling the book horribly. However, I think Huang is bold enough in their conclusions that this book's implications will spark a lot of big reactions from readers in both directions. It's rare that I pause a book to really question and interrogate my gut reactions to a book's theme, but I absolutely did that here. For those who have read it, there's a very similar reaction to Ted Chiang's The Lifecycle of Software Objects. For how many different thematic ideas Huang touches on, they all felt woven together so naturally into the story that it felt tangible and real, all without descending into a narrative dissection of what the reader is supposed to be taking away in connection to the world we live in.

What Didn't Work for Me:
Representing non-human minds and speech is a sliding scale. The closer you bring their experience to humans and rely on narrative exposition to tell the reader about alien nature, the more comprehensible the text. The further you drift from traditional structures and language, the more your writing truly reimagines something alien, immersing the reader in something less immediately appealing while allowing for greater depth (in my opinion). Huang laid out a particularly challenging task for themself, as the book seeks to represent an alien mind's interpretation of an even more eldritch set of sensory organs. The story relies heavily on ambiguity and references to alien culture/senses that encourage the reader to extrapolate their own version of xenobiology and xenopsychology. However, you won't find Huang playing with format, prose structure, or other more unusual techniques to represent alien language or mindset.

I think Huang's decision to strike a middle ground is a good one overall. However, with how intentional they were about some of the linguistic discussions at the start, it would have been interesting to see this novella push into something more experimental, sort of like what Dolki Min did in the excellent (and grotesque) Walking Practice. To be clear, this would have made the book far less marketable, so I can't be upset by the path Huang took. However, it is the choice keeping this book from being a serious contender for my favorite story of the year.

Conclusion: a truly excellent novella with lots of interesting and contentious things to say, wrapped up in a fairly accessible package.

Want More Reviews Like This? try my blog Marked For Plot

As a middle school English teacher, I get swamped with essays and book reports about Percy Jackson and comparable titles. This means I sometimes grow weary of gods and monsters in the modern world, especially if they lend themselves to a more lighthearted or comedic romp of a story. I avoided When Among Crows mostly because I found Roth’s Divergent books to be fine, but relatively unremarkable in the crowded YA dystopia landscape. However, this book hit generally settled in a much better spot for a more mature look at a similar idea. If you’re looking for a story based on Slavic folklore with a bit of action, a bit of character development, and a bit of spookiness, this will be a satisfying read. I thought it was a hair predictable and lacked a wow factor, but I immediately put the sequel on hold with my local library. A much shorter summary of my thoughts about the sequel are at the end of this review.

Read If Looking For: Baba Jaga, monsters that typically don’t get much screen time, secrets in every backstory

Avoid If Looking For: plot twists you don’t see coming, deep internal monologues, realistic portraits of queer men

Does it Bingo? Older Protagonist (implied, but not explicitly stated for our two monstrous POVs. Not HM), Duology Part 1/2, Nonhuman Protagonist. Depending on the reader, it may also qualify for Feast Your Eyes on This (emotions).

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To the other reviews in this readathon, see my announcement post.

The Premise:
Dymitr is seeking out Baba Jaga. Being a human, this is probably a very bad idea. However, he’s equipped to handle the dangerous world of Striga and Zmora who feed on the pain and anger of mortals and outlive all of their food. He comes bearing a gift in exchange for aid: a cure for a cursed Zmora with a penchant for elaborate illusioncraft. Their path to Baba Jaga, and Dymitr’s motivation for the journey, unravel over the course of their travels through Chicago.

What Worked for Me:
The strongest part of this novella was how Roth welded her prose and setting together. This book dances of the edge of horror at times (I skipped about a minute of audio where Dymitr cut out his own fingernail), but mostly lives in the spooky corners of Fantasy. We get intimidating grandmothers drilling lessons onto child Dymitr’s brain, hordes of gruesome critters, and disturbing imagery when creatures reveal their more monstrous sides. Roth just nails the emotional beats of her characters and settings. Things she intends to be unsettling left me antsy; the alluring man whom everyone else avoids piques my interest; the hokey movie theater showing horror movies to collect fear was just a little humorous (who doesn’t want a drink served in a massive skull-shaped goblet?). There’s plenty of imagination here while still feeling very old, the way a story steeped in folklore should be. One of my favorite moments was an in-universe story about Baba Jaga outsmarting a witch who tried to steal her power, which was a simple and effective way to integrate folklore into the story’s plot and raise the stakes of seeking this witch out. 

Roth’s rendition of Chicago felt like a drawer of sharpened knives about to overflow. Its Polish community was both deeply steeped in tradition while also feeling very Chicagoan. There’s a focus on sacrifice and debt that feels very honest to the dark tales common in European folklore. When Among Crows never slid into monotony, and the world always felt lived-in and dark without being overly gritty or nihilistic. In some ways her writing reminded me of how Vo tackles her modern - and near-modern - settings: they feel alive in ways that most Urban Fantasy fails at, and there’s never a veneer of artificiality that you have to push past to get to the good bits of the story. The good bits often involve warriors pulling out their own spines to use as magic swords … which is badass and terrifying.

I worried a bit when I realized this novella was going to bounce between two - and then three - character perspectives. I tend to prefer this in full novels or short stories, but it was handled very well here. There are some common-sense writer moves to make this work;  the three mostly stick together, and each brings a unique set of skills and knowledge to solve conflicts. However, they also each have a unique narrative voice and way of thinking about the world. In proper dark(ish) fantasy fashion, each is fucked up in their own personal way, and you won’t find anyone without a traumatic backstory. They’re perhaps not the most original characters I’ve encountered: a tortured soul, a powerful outcast, and a desperate survivor, but I’m excited to follow them in the second half of the duology.

 Really, if fantasy inspired by Slavic Folklore is of interest to you at all, I think this novella is well worth a look.

What Didn’t Work For Me:
Simply put, this story was a bit predictable for me. I liked most of the individual scenes, but the connective tissue stitching it together felt a bit weaker. I kind of wish Roth had abandoned the idea of twists or reveals, which do form a rather core part of a few significant scenes. Instead, had she chosen to explore secrets and their psychological impact on page 1, instead of page 70, I think the novella would have been much stronger. However, I smelled the twist coming very early, and it’s really hard to tell when this is a universal experience and when I just got (un)lucky.

I also feel the need to put in a note that Dymitr's homosexuality didn't quite ring true. As someone who isn't Polish, I hesitate to speak too much on this. However, the more 'old school' side of Polish culture seems - from the outside - to be wholly unaccepting of queerness. I wish Roth would have dove into this. As someone raised in a very anti-queer community, it's tough to overstate how much it shapes your views on the world. I'm not mad at how Roth wrote Dymitr, but neither do I choose to laud it as an example of quality writing of gay men from a female author.

Otherwise, When Among Crows is an example of a great workhorse book that doesn’t really aspire to greatness. Roth is happy to tread some well worn paths with a new and evocative set dressing. There’s some light thematic work around pain and sacrifice, what repairing harm looks like, and family. However, not much innovation is happening here beyond creatures that typically don’t get much attention in fantasy books.. It’s the type of story that I think most people who read fantasy will enjoy, but I don’t think it’ll make the cut for most people’s favorite books lists.

Conclusion: A wonderful setting, with moody vibes and interesting characters, but a predictable plot.

How’s the Sequel?

The second half of the duology: To Clutch a Razor, is largely going to provide more of the same, though I enjoyed the first book more. This story takes Dymitr back to Poland for a funeral, and to meet his family for the first time since the events of book 1. Without spoilers for the earlier book, there are some specific reasons why he thinks his reception may go very badly.

The thing I was most excited about from this novella’s description was a heavier focus on Dymitr’s internal struggle with his place in the world, and what it means to love people and places that you now see as monstrous. There is a little of this in the book, but Roth seems averse to any sort of commitment to explore deeper thematic ideas or psychological anguish in her characters. 

Instead, she finds a way to get Niko and Ala to join Dymitr on this journey too. This felt very awkward to me, like she couldn’t imagine a sequel that didn’t include all three protagonists. At least in Harry Potter, JK Rowling didn’t write Hermione into the story when Harry was at Ron’s house, you know? Roth also took this book into more of an action direction. It still had the mystic vibes, but I think the story got consumed by plot, when the plot was the least interesting thing about the book’s premise. A story that should have been about the pain of sacrifice, the duality of love, and the grief for someone still alive turned into something much shallower. It wasn’t empty of meaning, but it didn’t take the leap of faith I wanted it to. Instead, it leaned into parts of the original book that I was most unimpressed with.

To be clear, this sequel wasn’t bad - though I do think the awkwardness of forcing the story to maintain all three protagonists equally was a bad decision - but it is not the novella that I craved. 

I have been super hit or miss with Klune. He’s definitely the biggest gay author in fantasy right now, but I don’t find myself terribly interested in pursuing his backlog. However, since We Burned so Bright is a novella, featured elderly gay protagonists, and got a reputation for being a tonal shift from his normal writing, I figured it would be worth trying out. I still don’t think Klune is going to be a must read author for me, but this settled some hesitations I had about his older work.

Read If You: want to watch the world crumble, enjoy episodic stories, crave elderly protagonists who don’t descend into stereotypes

Avoid If You: are looking for cozy fantasy, salacious gay romance, or saving the world

Does it Bingo? Vacation Spot (road trip!), Older Protagonist (HM), Explorers and Rangers (I can see arguments for and against, but what are road trips but an exploration?)

Elevator Pitch:
The world is ending. A black hole is slowly consuming our solar system, and everyone’s lives are measured in weeks. Don and Rodney are an elderly couple. As the world ends, they buy an RV and set to travel from Maine to Washington. Along the way, they meet all sorts of folks who are facing the end of the world in their own way. At the end of their journey is a piece of their own past that they never completely came to terms with.

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To the other reviews in this readathon, see my announcement post.

What Worked for Me:
I really liked how Klune approached the end of the world. Not the impending black hole; that was a bit dramatic even for me. However, the hard timeline for everyone’s death led to some great moments. Don and Rodney weren’t my favorite characters in the world, but I loved how they encountered a wide variety of different perspectives on an apocalypse. You’ll find hope and violence and fear and joy in this story. I knew this book was on the more serious end of Klune’s writing, but it got far more intense than I was expecting. There was an entire chapter where a ranch hand recounted how she murdered her family in an attempt to spare them pain, just as she would stun cattle before slaughtering them. Not every chapter goes that hard or dark - some are delightfully joyous - but you’ll encounter a spectrum in this book. I really liked that choice, and I’d love to see Klune write more in this style in the future!

I thought this book was a frank and honest examination of how humankind isn’t a monolith, and how a hard end-point puts a lot of things into perspective. Different characters prioritized different things, but everyone was chasing something in their final days, even if just peace and quiet. There isn’t a huge connective tissue between each encounter Don and Rodney have, but each one brought something different to the table. Life is short, and this book is a call to action to start chasing what matters to you now, instead of waiting.

The rest of this section will have spoilers for why Don & Rodney are travelling on this road trip, which aren’t revealed until the final act of the book. 

While we get hints throughout the book about Don & Rodney’s son being the driving force behind the story, Klune keeps details very sparse. Decades ago, the pair adopted a young boy who had experienced significant trauma, lashed out frequently, and generally had a shitty hand dealt to him. We get a (truncated) story of his life from Don and Rodney’s perspective, culminating in his suicide. They are travelling to spread his ashes at the location of one of their happiest shared memories. Back when I read The House on the Cerulean Sea, I really struggled with how Klune introduced us to kids with similar levels of trauma, only for a single kind conversation to ‘fix’ them. As a teacher, that isn’t how it works. I understand that’s a very cozy book, but it was very frustrating because it played into how people without that type of trauma perceive the healing process. This was a much more honest portrait. Now, honesty need not mean suicide, but at least it acknowledged the real issues and challenges that severe trauma take on a person. Klune doesn’t get it perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than his previous attempt. I was glad to see him take a misstep and try to fix it in his later writing.

What Didn’t Work for Me:
 There were so many interesting characters and narratives in this story, but Don and Rodney were rough. I can’t even say they were a slog, because it actually felt like they were pretty nonexistent for most of the story. They weren’t quite self-insert characters, but they also felt very passive and bland. On paper, everything about them should have really resonated with me. I love reading about established queer couples, where gay men aren’t horribly toxic or saccharine messes. However, it felt a little bit like Don and Rodney existed only as a vessel for others’ stories to flow through. It was common for entire pages to go by without them saying a word or doing a thing. Klune poured all his energy into the characters they met, but our main couple felt emotionally distant. There were a few exceptions (the hippie commune comes to mind), but I wish he’d have given them center stage more often. Even the end, which is ostensibly ‘their’ story, didn’t engage with their emotions and experiences quite as much as I’d have liked. This limited my enjoyment of the story to 'good, but probably not very memorable in the long-term', which is a real shame with how few elderly queer protagonists we get.

Conclusion: a powerful theme and interesting choices, but the protagonists needed a bit more development

Bingo Card Update
I have a finished card! I am substituting Cat Squasher for the Novella Square from 2023. I'll keep slotting new books in when I can add a stronger title over a weaker one. In the end I decided to slot this into my Achillean Protagonists card, keeping my novella card untouched.

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Platonic love is a topic that I've been craving more and more of in my reading, especially this month. Riot Baby has been languishing on my shelf for three years, and my craving for sibling bonds explored better than in my previous few reads finally got me to pick it up. I left the story conflicted. What Onyebuchi does well, he does phenomenally. However, I almost liked this story more as vignettes rather than as a cohesive novella.

Read If: you want a story about familial - not romantic - love, character centered stories are enjoyable to you

Avoid If: clear plot structures or well-executed speculative elements are important to you

Does it Bingo? Judge a Book by its Title, Book Club/Readalong, Politics, Author of Color

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To the other reviews in this readathon, see my announcement post.

The Premise:
This book follows siblings Ella and Kev throughout their childhood and early adulthood. Ella has powers akin to Jean Gray (a wide swath of extremely powerful abilities including precognition, destructive telekinesis, astral projection, etc), and Kev is a techie. The book’s main plot comes when Kev goes to jail, warping both his and Ella’s conception of what living in such a world looks like. However, the book doesn’t follow a traditional plot structure (you won’t find overarching antagonists here other than society itself), instead keeping Ella and Kev’s emotional journey as the focal point of the story.

What Worked for Me:
When this book focused on specific moments in time, Onyebuchi’s prose was captivating. From the streets of Harlem to the moment of grief and anger for a stillborn baby, Riot Baby captures moments with clarity that’s crystal-clear. Ella and Kev each go through hell in this book, and Onyebuchi makes their pain tangible. It’s the specificity of detail in an individual moment that make these portions of Riot Baby so compelling. It feels like we have been brought into this world to experience life with this pair of siblings, and it’s the connection with the personal experiences of these two that make the theme’s Riot Baby is chasing (the injustice of power in America, namely) shine through the brightest. 

It’s hard to understate the emotional intensity of these scenes. Sometimes this is expected: when we witness Kev preparing to commit suicide from his prison cell, his cellmate giving him privacy to end his life without an audience was a moment of kindness that forced me to walk away from the story for an hour before returning. However, more often Riot Baby uses specific scenes to bring tension, fear, and anger to everything that comes after. One of the early pages I marked included the line “She remembers Mama telling her not to egg that dog on, not to tease it because one day the chain around its neck and the chain-link fence it sometimes throws itself against won’t be enough.” The story in this book is that dog, and you become Ella in the analogy; Riot Baby builds and builds upon itself as you wait for that inevitable moment when the characters break free of the chains and release the built up tension upon the setting and its readers. 

What Didn’t Work for Me:
While I enjoyed moments of this story in isolation, I don’t know that I liked it as a full novella. The connective tissue between scenes didn’t help build on any of the foundation laid in Onyebuchi’s scenework. It felt scattered, trying to do too many things at once. This book wanted to be a portrait of life in American cities, an exploration of the injustice of our justice system, a magical realism story of power and revenge, a dystopian imagining of America’s racist future, and a deeply personal story of a family. It’s too much in 160 pages, and the book as a whole suffered for it.

Additionally, I’m not sure what the speculative elements added to this story. You’ve got the magical powers - most prominently of Ella - which are both ill defined and not leveraged in the storytelling very often. As the book progresses, it shifts a bit into a technological dystopia of robocops and surveillance implants. Unfortunately, this never got fleshed out enough to be anything other than a shallow commentary on what might be. Similarly, the emotional impact is far lower than the personal vignettes, abandoning Onyebuchi’s greatest strengths in this novella.. I left the book feeling like it would have been better as realistic fiction, because the speculative elements were more a distraction than an asset to the story. 

Conclusion: An emotionally intense story, but not the most coherent plot I’ve seen

Bingo Card Update
I have a finished card! I am substituting Cat Squasher for the Novella Square from 2023. I'll keep slotting new books in when I can add a stronger title over a weaker one. Unfortunately, Riot Baby's bingo squares overlap with some stories that I feel unreservedly positively about. It happily got plugged into my 'no extra theme' card, however! So this card remains the same.

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Nine Goblins has been bouncing around my noggin for a while. I have a soft spot for the green little buggers, and thought it would be nice for them to finally get the spotlight. This novella went the way most of Kingfisher’s stories have gone for me: I liked the story well enough but kept wanting it to be something a bit different than it actually was. I don’t think I’ll ever regret reading one of her stories, but I’m never chasing down her newest releases either. This was a fun backlog read that I’m glad I got the excuse to finally get around to!

Read If: you’re hankering for a story about goblins (duh), always wanted your teddy bear to come to life as a kid, want to see what a countercultural elf looks like

Avoid If: you don’t want your silly story to get gruesome, you refuse to read comedic fantasy inferior to Discworld

Does it Bingo? Judge a Book by its Title, Nonhuman Protagonist, Explorers and Rangers, 

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To the other reviews in this readathon, see my announcement post.

Elevator Pitch:
Despite its title, this book actually follows two separate storylines (which of course intersect). The first involves the titular Nine Goblins, soldiers in the war against human expansion. Interwoven into their tale is of a veterinarian elf who treats a variety of magical critters and has a particular fondness for trolls. When the goblins’ mission goes awry, they must find their way home from enemy territory.

What Worked for Me:
I think it’s clear to anyone who sees the cover of this book that Nine Goblins only works if the goblins themselves steal the show, and Kingfisher does a great job with them. She leans into a lot of the tropes (grubby, stupid, reckless) and builds a culture around these ideas. Sometimes it's silly: see a pair of identical twins you can’t tell apart? Just punch one in the eye to solve the problem. Other times she simply explores a new cultural norm. Goblins complaining is a sign of affection and compliments. It’s when they don’t even have the energy to speak up about food that you know you did a really bad job cooking. You get to know the crew of lovable scamps who are simply following orders and doing their best to cook some good gruel from a rusty pot. Nobody is particularly deep or nuanced, but you don’t mind it because the whole story (at first) is poking fun at itself. 

This book was published 13 years ago. In the time since, retellings and reclamations of villains and monsters as heroes have become so popular as to feel like a worn out trope itself. Despite me reading this book in a rather crowded landscape, Nine Goblins stands out as a story that didn’t fit into the tired trends of other stories of its ilk. In all likelihood, that’s precisely because Kingfisher wrote this before this style of writing became vogue, but it’s worth noting. 

What Didn’t Work for Me:
Let’s address the elephant in the room: the first half novella reads a lot like a Terry Prachett novel. It’s got a lot of silly offshoots and one-liners, but ultimately the plot itself takes itself pretty seriously. It uses its comedy as a way to talk about real world issues. Not every comedic fantasy has the stylings of a Discworld story, but this very much does. Unfortunately, Kingfisher’s comedic stylings aren’t as strong as her horror work. I enjoyed Nine Goblins well enough but, as someone who has only read about 5 Discworld novels (and enjoys them, but doesn’t list them amongst his favorite fantasy stories), I kept wishing I’d just read another Discoworld book instead. This vibe lasted for around half the novella.

Then, the story has a rather abrupt tonal shift into something far darker. You get the mangled bodies of humans and animals. The insanity of magic which was a quirky aside becomes something present and tangible. The fun gobliny moments fade back as a more serious plot takes center-stage, separate from the comedic trappings of the first half. This takes us to the climax, whose conclusion promptly sees Kingfisher pivot back to comedy and lighthearted silliness. It was jarring and disjointed. The two halves of the book felt very different, and the first half was (in my mind) significantly stronger. 

I’d have liked this novella a lot more if Kingfisher had committed to a more consistent tone. Specifically, I’d have enjoyed seeing something even more absurd and silly than the first half. Something akin to a low-fantasy Minions movie following a goblin military regiment. That clearly wasn’t the book Kingfisher wanted to write, but I think it would have been much more successful. 

Conclusion: This novella struggles with odd tonal shifts, but is an enjoyable silly/horrific read that will scratch the goblin protagonist itch

Bingo Card Update
I have a finished card! I am substituting Cat Squasher for the Novella Square from 2023. I'll keep slotting new books in when I can add a stronger title over a weaker one. I opted to not put Nine goblins in. I could've slotted it into Non Human Protagonist, which I had a similar enjoyment level to, but I'd rather put attention towards a self published work if other things are equal.

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I adored This is How You Lose the Time War, and I’d been meaning to get around to more work by Amal El-Mohtar. After reading three other Hugo nominees, this seemed like a logical next step. It is the third fairy tale novella nominated for the Hugos this year. I didn’t dislike this book, but I also didn’t fall in love with it like so many others have. Certainly I’d put it lowest in my Hugo rankings.

Read If Looking For:  the power of sisterhood, conjugation-as-magic, unknowable fae, lush prose, high quality audiobook production

Avoid If Looking For: tense plotting, twists and surprises, rigorous thematic work

Does it Bingo? The Afterlife, Vacation Spot, Author of Color, Book Club

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To the other reviews in this readathon, see my announcement post.

Elevator Pitch:
Esther and Ysabel are sisters who grow magical willow trees on the banks of a river flowing from the fae realms. Their devotion to each other and the songs of their work keep them as close as sisters can get. However, Esther has suitors; a neighbor looking to expand his financial empire, and a fae whose customs are alluring and frustrating. The story’s focus places relatively equal weight on the sibling and romantic relationships, with Esther getting a heavier focus than Ysabel.

What Worked for Me:
The writing in this story is so pretty! As with This is How You Lose the Time War, it’s a lush and evocative book, though this story has more vibes and less plot than El-Mohtar’s previous novella. I particularly enjoyed Mohtar’s approach to magic: the story has several monologues on the nature of grammar, and how grammar is inherently a tool for change. Songs and music featured prominently (the audiobook was beautifully narrated), and there were some fun moments of magic and wordplay. El-Mohtar leaned into the stereotypes around fae and their love of creative language to get around the restrictions of their existence, and baked those ideas into the core of the world. The entire story lives in something of a liminal space, and it feels like there’s a constant tug between worlds throughout the entire tale. I do wish we’d seen more examples of magic. There was a lot of commentary about magic, but only one example of it in action. 

I feel like familial bonds don’t get much attention in Fantasy stories, and sister bonds even less than other relationships. I loved seeing it get full focus here. While Esther’s romantic life certainly features prominently, the novella is mostly interested in exploring how that shift in dynamic is affecting both sisters, and their love for each other is ultimately the core that the story is built around. More siblings in Fantasy please! This was great. 

What Didn’t Work For Me:
My biggest issue with The River Has Roots was its lack of tension. The narrative was painfully straightforward, which was at odds with El-Mohtar’s prose. We know the villain of the story fairly early on, and there isn’t much build up towards the main conflicts (either Ysabel fearing her sister is leaving her behind or Esther struggling to get a man to take the hint and leave her alone). It got resolved in a similarly straightforward manner, and the bittersweet ending wasn’t enough to give it the complexity that the novella’s style was asking for. The story just sort of … happened? Yes it was heartfelt and beautiful, but I kept feeling like the story was a bit aimless. 

Simplicity can work in fairy tale stories. After all, they’re inspired by stories that are themselves fairly short and lacking complexity. Some of my favorite books in this genre have a simplicity to them. Typically though, that simplicity allows readers to build tension with their previous knowledge of fairy tale stories. Here, I just never felt tension or betrayal or shock. Yes the story was simple, but told in a way that sapped interest from what should have been engaging. It could have been a short story without losing much meaning or depth. Was the beautiful prose (and singing in the audiobook) enough to anchor the length of a novella? Not for me, I think. 

Conclusion: A book about sisterhood, the mysteries of magic, and how life changes. Gorgeous prose, but without much tension.

I have a finished card! I am substituting Cat Squasher for the Novella Square from 2023. I'll keep slotting new books in when I can add a stronger title over a weaker one. I chose not to add this novella to the bingo card.

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I am proud to announce that I have completed my QueerSFF Reading challenge! For those who aren't aware, here is a link to the announcement with more information. There's a chance that I end up completing a second, but I'm not going to go out of my way to get there. Had a blast, excited to see what next year's challenge has to bring! Micro-reviews below, and the majority of these are actually novellas, meaning a good number of them will be much quicker reads than the typical novel.

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Lifelode by Jo Walton - only fits Queer Family
This had some really mind-bending worldbuilding, but the real star is how Walton shifted the focus of Fantasy to domestic life, celebrating and embracing the work of managing a household. I haven't read anything else quite like this, which is why I kept it on the card. It features poly relationship that perhaps aren't as queer as I'd have enjoyed, but it certainly challenges the norms of what family can look like. Longform Review

Barbalien: Red Planet by Tate Brombal and Jeff Lemire - fits Comic, Coming Out, Intersectional x3
A superhero story that places a greater focus on AIDS advocacy movements, and a really sweet (but doomed) romance. Comics have a rough history with this time period - looking at you New Guardians! - but this managed to avoid both trauma porn and sanitizing the epidemic. I'd like more speculative fiction from this time period! Longform Review.

Body And Soul by Jordan Castillo Price (part of Psycop series) - Only fits Coming Out, though book 1 also just qualifies for Throwback
A paranormal police procedural following a depressed medium who can't turn his powers off without powerful anti-psychic drugs, which he might be addicted to. Each book follows its own crime, as well as tracing his (moderately toxic) relationship with a hunky police officer. This is mindless, mildly problematic, and a lot of fun. It brought me back to my Janet Evanovich days, and I will always thank my mom for sparking my love of sexually charged police thrillers (I am officially Team Ranger for other fans of the Stephanie Plum books). Longform Review

Party of Fools by Cedar McCloud - fits 40+ Years Old, Intersectional x3
This is a D&D style comedic romp featuring food and a surprisingly serious rebellion plotline - including the process of deprogramming and coming to terms with the crimes of the Empire one serves. This is blisteringly quick, lighthearted, and a really excellent 'breather' book featuring a wide cast of queer characters. Longform Review.

Werecockroach by Polenth Blake - fits Intersectional x3, Coming Out (very casually), and Aro Paro
I know this one is well-loved on this sub here, but it was just a little too sweet and silly for me (I say this despite raving about a silly book directly above this one). I really liked the opening, which focused on the narrator getting to know his roommates and trying to maintain normalcy while an alien invasion is happening. This is super cozy, with a dark backstory set with a very breezy main plot. Longform Review.

Brimstone Slipstream by Matt Weber - fits Intersectional x3 and Queer Family
A journalistic report on two rising stars in the illegal dragon street racing circuit. It bounced between snippets of history, interviews with the two racers, their ground crew, and a rival/friend. Really great balance of cool worldbuilding, thematic commentary on how privilege and expensive sports intersect, and just not quite something I'd seen before. Sequels seem to be more straightforward plot/structure, and I can't wait for them. Longform Review.

Queen O'Nine Tails by Lindz McLeod - fits Sapphic Swashbuckler, Queer Publisher (which has gone under), and Coming Out (casually)
A pirate story with some light horror elements. I actually wish the horror elements were introduced far sooner, because they were some of my favorite parts! Really fun sapphic romance with a well-developed cast. Just very mismarketed. Longform Review.

The Iron Below Remembers by Sharang Biswas - fits Gay Academic and Queer Publisher
A contender for my book of the year! This mixes academic writing about this Earth's alternate history (in which an Indian nation became a conquering power instead of Britain), mixed with a normal person's POV in a superhero world. It also focused on the work required to maintain relationships, especially in changing life situations. Longform Review.

Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes - fits Coming Out and Trans Body Horror (I think some wouldn't count it here, but I do see the Trans character as one of our protagonists)
This one is very of the moment, and I happily jumped on the bandwagon. Really imaginative setting (bugs go to the opera, magic perfume), but what really worked for me was how the author presented art, politics, and warfare as the same thing. Not that they're so related you can't untangle them, but that there fundamentally is no difference. It's a very unique book, though the language is definitely on the flowery side. Longform Review.

North Continent Ribbon by Ursula Witcher - fits Intersectional x3, Queer Publisher, and maybe Short Story Collection? This is kind of a hybrid between an anthology and a mosaic novel, and is kind of hard to quantify.
Six short stories trace ~300 years of history on a settled world, much of it focusing on society's developing relationship to technology and automation. It started a bit scattered (and very romance focused) but the last three stories started developing some through-lines that were intense and unlike anything I'd seen before. Plus it features collective bargaining! Spaceships go on strike. Longform Review.

Call and Response by Christopher Caldwell - fits Intersectional x3, Queer Publisher, and Short Story Colelction
A set of 5 duets; short stories that are linked in some way. Thematically this anthology focuses on black & queer vengeance and resilience. Caldwell does a great job of keeping the stories laser focused on the intimate and personal, and they span a pretty wide range of genres and topics. Longform Review.

The God Eaters by Jesse Hajicek - fits Throwback
My other potential book of the year! This is a heavily internal and psychological fantasy/western/romance hybrid. It follows two prisoners who have resisted a violent theocracy, unaware of the ancient god that is pulling the strings. Really powerful romance that doesn't conform with a lot of the more traditional Genre tropes. Longform Review.

The third and final of my purchases from the now defunct Hedone Press, which unfortunately means you can only get this via Audible at the moment. I participate in this sub’s bingo challenge as well as the r/QueerSFF reading challenge, of which one of the prompts is ‘Sapphic Swashbuckler’ which this book definitely fits. However, I think this book does a poor job of marketing what it actually is, which is mostly a fantasy romance on a pirate ship, with only a smattering of the horror story I thought I was walking into. Actually, don’t read the official blurb at all. I started sketching out my initial thoughts for this review at page 100 (of 180), and the blurb spoils a major plot event that hadn’t happened yet.

Read If Looking For: sapphic pirates with a strong romance subplot, jealous crewmates, magic that isn’t always explainable

Avoid If Looking For: gore, terror, or grotesqueness, detailed sex scenes 

Does it Bingo? Small Press (HM) … and that’s mostly it. There’s some food scenes, but nothing that feels major enough. YMMV on if it counts for Judge a Book by its Title or Vacation spot. Similarly, if you count pirates as explorers, it could slot in there too. 

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To the other reviews in this readathon, see my announcement post.

The Premise:
Gloria Vane is an aspiring con woman, though mostly because it’s the path in life her uncle has set for her. On her way to swindle a new husband in America, she gets captured by pirates, immediately pisses off half the crew, and starts romantically taunting the captain Valentina Mallozzi. This book isn’t quite action, isn’t quite a romance, isn’t quite adventure, but something living in a space between all three. 

What Worked for Me
I’m always a fan of when authors write characters who aren’t good at everything and then make those weaknesses meaningful and relevant to the story. Vane is a spy in training, a con woman, a manipulator. She gets to use that toolkit a few times throughout the story. She also can’t fight and doesn’t know the first thing about sailing. While combat isn’t a huge portion of this story, it comes up enough that I felt like Lindz wasn’t holding her protagonist’s hand in the rough spots, nor did she let Vane survive scenes unscathed when it wasn’t warranted. The approach helps with tension, because the stakes feel real and the victories earned. 

As a gay man, I have a bias towards romance plotlines involving two dudes. You can’t avoid heterosexual ones, of course, almost every mainstream novel has them. Sapphic fantasy dominated my transition into more ambitious types of Fantasy (my eternal gratitude towards Nghi Vo, Tamsyn Muir, and Seth Dickenson for shepherding my taste forward), but they rarely focused on a developing relationship. When it comes to romance-forward books, I’ll almost always spring for the gay one. Acknowledging that, I really liked how McLeod wrote Vane and Mallozzi’s arc. Great banter, good sense of tension that breaks at appropriate times, acknowledging the Romance tropes that work well without being beholden to them. And if it works for me, it’ll probably work for most people whose gut instinct isn’t to run away from romance plotlines like they were plague rats. Lindz’s backlog seems pretty diverse, but she really knocked the Romance portion of the story out of the park.

What Didn’t Work for Me
Let’s take a second to talk about branding. This book is named after a famously bloody weapon that also gets used for torture. The cover art shows leaking blood and has a stark red and black color pallette. The opening scene involves Vane watching a flogging on a merchant ship, fascinated by how the skin opened like butter. Everything about this is screaming nautical horror, which the blurb of the book reflects. It turns out … that the pirate crew is actually pretty loath to kill people, and Vane’s punishment for breaking rules and mouthing off is chores and a spanking. Even when our plucky protagonist earns the ire of several crew members, the worst that happens is a fistfight and a pretty tame assassination attempt. If you’re going to make me think this is a horror book, give me horror! This isn’t even like The Flesh of the Sea (same publisher) where the horror simply put on a cozy set of clothing. This just … didn’t feature horror elements for the vast majority of the book. The final product was an enjoyable story about a woman adapting to pirate life, even if the prose didn’t grip me by the throat and threaten me with a good time. Match your marketing to your book please! I anticipate this is more Hedone Press’s fault than Lindz’s, but I do not think the people picking this book up are getting what they signed up for. 

Otherwise, this book is fine. It doesn’t tackle too much for a novella, it’s pleasantly plot focused. The characters aren’t cardboard cutouts, even if they don’t have a ton of depth. It’s the type of story I’m not mad at reading, but that also isn’t making me want to hunt down more books by the author. In two months, I don’t think I’m going to remember this one much. Ironically, the sparse horror elements were quite enjoyable. I think the novella would have been more successful had Lindz introduced that element earlier and developed it as the main focus of the story. 

Conclusion: good horror and romance, but unfortunately neither was the prime focus of the story, which was more tepid

Novella Bingo Card
I have a finished card! I am substituting Cat Squasher for the Novella Square from 2023. I'll keep slotting new books in when I can add a stronger title over a weaker one. I reshuffled Of the Wild to Non-Human and bumped off Autobiography of Red, a book I still want to revisit somedya.

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The Cozy Fantasy/Sci boom seems to have two modes: romance featuring the opening of a small business, and elderly folks solving murders. Unsurprisingly, this is the latter. I liked this book quite a bit, though Mystery aficionados will leave disappointed. The portrait of the generation ship that Dorothy rides on is unrealistic, but an engaging and evocative locale for a series of mysteries to be set in. I’ll read the sequel for sure, as this series feels like a great palette cleanser between longer novels. In terms of Hugo viability? I’d slot this well below Cinder House, probably about equal with Summer War. 

Read If You: are craving something light and readable, want to follow a stereotypical Auntie solving crimes, enjoy utopian portraits of humanity’s future

Avoid If You: want realistic depictions of space travel or economic models, want the experience of a tightly written mystery

Does it Bingo? Judge a Book by its Title, Vacation Spot, Older Protagonist, Murder Mystery

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To the other reviews in this readathon, see my announcement post.

Elevator Pitch:
Dorothy was taking a break from life when the Fairweather’s AI stuck her consciousness in the body of a bank clerk. It turns out the previous host for her new body was tangled up in some shady business, including wiping a shelf of memory archives that included Dorothy’s herself. As she gets used to a new body that she very much hopes to abandon as soon as possible, Dorothy gets pulled back into her Detective work, hoping to solve a mystery that involved several deaths, at least one of which was permanent (not something that’s supposed to happen on this ship).

What Worked for Me:
Murder by Memory is exactly what I’m looking for in a cozy mystery. It’s got an interesting narrator who has enough personality to avoid being a self-insert. The prose is light and breezy, the type of book you can chip away at without feeling drained. I enjoyed romping around the ship seeing a bunch of different locations; we got to see a yarn shop! Waite’s writing is great at providing lush sensory details without overwhelming the story with exposition and descriptions. As a Mystery, this book isn’t much. As a cozy Sci Fi with a mystery throughline, I loved it. I finished the book in two sittings and would have happily picked up the sequel if my tower of novellas wasn’t staring me in the face. 

The Fairweather itself is a great setting for a series. The ship is certainly not a realistic portrayal of space travel - they have a bunch of excess housing and aren’t constantly worried about the ship breaking down - but the ship was a more romantic portrait of what an immortal life sailing to humanity’s new home might look like. It’s full of cute little shops, libraries of glass books holding the memories of all voyagers, and gardens to keep people thinking of home. They’ve even got mixologists who specialize in brewing the memories and sensations of Old-Earth in a drink! Just good fun, and a feel-good portrait of the future. There’s been lots of bleak sci fi on my plate recently, so this was nice.

What Didn’t Work for Me:
As I mentioned above, I really like the Fairweather as a setting. The vaguely utopian generation ship was a fun setting, if not a realistic one. However, portions of this self-contained world just didn’t make a bunch of sense. The economy is the big offender here. It’s based on a series of concepts that I generally support (plentiful housing, universal basic income, attempts to prevent billionaires), but within the context of the spaceship setting, these concepts felt brittle. We only see small snippets of this vaguely utopian world. Normally, I’d brush aside how seemingly traditional economies are functioning within such a closed ecosystem with personal automatic fabrication of … anything. However, economics ends up fairly central to the mystery of this book, which drew those questions to the forefront of my mind as I was reading.

The sequel looks like it deals with a mystery baby appearing - reproduction has stopped for this ship on its journey - and I’m curious if I’ll have a similar response to the author's exploration of that topic. To a certain extent, this has echoed my feelings about a variety of authors entering the Speculative Fiction space who have previously written Contemporary or Historical Fiction; the prose and reading experience are great, but the speculative elements don’t quite hold up to authors who have been immersed in genre writing for longer. Do you really expect me to believe that backups for people’s memories wasn’t a priority? However, this was a fun and short read, and the negatives don’t outweigh the positives for me. For those looking for Science Fiction grounded in logic and scientific principles, this book will likely be a big miss.

Conclusion: a good cozy ‘mystery’ that’s quick, vibe-forward, and light. It falls short on some of the Sci Fi and Mystery genre elements, however.

Novella Bingo Card
I have a finished card! I am substituting Cat Squasher for the Novella Square from 2023. I'll keep slotting new books in when I can add a stronger title over a weaker one.

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I haven't been super in touch with new releases, and thus have not read the vast majority of the books nominated for this year's Hugo Awards. However, Summer War seems to have enough buzz to be a realistic contender for winning the novella category. Novik’s work has always been enjoyable, and Schoolomance is a series that I’ve reread more than anything else in the past few years. The parts of Summer War that I liked were divine, but is it award worthy? Probably not, because I thought the story missed some opportunities for depth. Overall I think Cinder House was superior in almost every way.

Read If Looking For: fey that feel truly inhuman, fairy tale structures, wordplay and tricks, original fairy tales

Avoid If Looking For: plots that flow naturally, good fathers, the true meaning of love

Does it Bingo? Judge a Book by Its Title, Game Changer (do duels count? It feels right), Vacation Spot, Book Club/Readalong, Politics

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To the other reviews in this readathon, see my announcement post.

The Premise:
Celia discovers she is the first Sorceress in generations on the same day her older brother rejects his inheritance and leaves, abandoning her as well. She curses him to be loveless, her father goes into despair at his departure, and she finally realizes her other brother is more than a useless nobody. The King now wants to marry her into the Royal family, but she’s only 12, so that likely won’t happen for a while. And behind it all the threat of brutal Summer War, the hundred year conflict with the Summerlings, looms. 

What Worked for Me
This book has one of the best representations of fae that I’ve ever seen. Novik captures the essence of something that understands reality in ways that humans cannot. They stand on the banks of time, stuck in loops of thinking even as generations of humans pass. They are creatures entrenched in stories and symmetry, caring more for the shape of things than true fairness or justice. It does not matter that a century has passed if balance has not been achieved with the great wrong done to them. Their logic is consistent, but utterly unlike ours. They will feel nothing at the slaughter of towns, but shed tears for the death of a great human knight. It’s almost like the stereotype of chivalric romance tuned up exponentially with a layer of magic thrown into the equation. Novik nailed the vibes, and I think the success of this book rides more or less entirely on whether or not these fae depictions work for you. 

The Summer War also does a good job at throwing a bunch of plot elements into a single small package and making them work. It begins laser focused on Celia’s curse of her brother, moves to a thorough divergence of her father’s ambitious path from nobody to great lord via Summer War victories, looks at the budding relationship with the forgotten brother, dives into some political scheming against the crown, and finally shifts to a trip to the Summer Lands (which have their own many plot beats). It doesn’t overwhelm the novella because this is a story about stories, and oral storytelling is full of digressions, tangents, and sidequests. I know some feel like the pacing at the start was slow. In particular, the long focus on the father's accomplishments has gotten some criticism, but I really liked it. I ended up being invested in the setting more than the plot or characters, so possibly this is why I didn't mind that the 'story' proper didn't start till halfway through the book This could have easily expanded into a full length novel without any additional plot points. That would have been a delightful book as well, but the abundance of plot didn’t bother me in a small package.

What Didn’t Work for Me
Novik’s humans are wooden as fencepost. I know she can write better characters than this, so I think it was an intentional choice for the sake of the fairy tale stylings. Celia gets the tiniest bit of nuance, mostly of her being a stuck up noble without realizing it. However, she is not at all a convincing child. At 12, she’s acting like a 30 year old woman. You can’t even age-up the characters in your head, because her being 12 is a major point of contention between her father and the King in the marriage negotiations. Her father goes through many abrupt personality shifts that are not at all believable, and Rorick (the forgotten brother) is a nothingburger of a character. The oldest brother - the valiant and heroic knight who leaves because their father won’t accept his homosexuality - is literally just a knight in shining armor but gay. They're all fairy tale archetypes with one or two superficial twists, but the lack of depth really hamstrung how much I cared about their fates. The second half of the book really leans into sibling love and care as a central conceit, but it all fell flat to me because of my apathy towards the cast.

I also thought there were too many thematic threads that Novik did nothing with. A great deal was made of Celia’s sorcery, including a lengthy explanation on its mechanics as an outpouring of pain and heartbreak. However, she doesn’t use her magic to do much throughout the story. This is totally fine, since it’s about human choices (though I didn’t think that worked either) but it felt odd the details got so much screen time. The societal rejection of Argent (the shining knight)’s queerness got early billing, including Celia’s lack of recognition of his situation. While she makes amends to her brother in the end, she never returns to the societal problem that landed their whole family in this mess to begin with. It’s like Novik wanted the aesthetics of homophobia without closing the loop or actually doing anything more than using it to grab attention and move elsewhere. The book took tiny steps towards exploring how women lack power or agency, yet Celia is the only living female character of any significance. I didn’t mind the expansive plot elements, but Novik could have tightened up the thematic weight of this story a lot. As it stands, it is a gorgeous story that never goes deeper than surface level. 

Conclusion: read if you like stories with fairy tale structures mixed with modern storytelling choices, or because you want to read the best rendered fae I’ve seen. Not a lot of depth though.

Novella Bingo Card
It is almost done! I am substituting Cat Squasher for the Novella Square from 2023. I'll keep slotting new books in when I can add a stronger title over a weaker one.

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I’ve been on a long kick of bad dads for this project, so I wanted something that I knew would not feature that character archetype. I actually almost read Of the Wild last year for the Parents Bingo Square. This book was satisfying, but probably not going to stick around in my head for a long time. I think it’ll be a good option for people who want a cozy fantasy that has a different vibe than most, or a different take on Romantasy than we’re used to seeing from the current boom. 

Read If Looking For: found family themes, love stories that don’t involve sex, cozy fantasy with some teeth

Avoid If Looking For: developed love interests, realistic portrayals of childhood trauma, bespoke prose

Does it Bingo? Self Published (HM), Older Protagonist, Non-Human Protagonist (HM), 

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To the other reviews in this readathon, see my announcement post.

Elevator Pitch:
Aeris is a fae who rescues children whose parents do not want them. However, the fruit of his tree, which allows his children to thrive and grow in arcane ways, are harder to find and less powerful every time one is picked. He is dying, and his tree dies with him. The Tall Ones are waiting to consume the children when Aeris can no longer defend his home. When a human dreams his way into Aeris’ domain, he sees a potential successor to take on his mantle once he passes on.

What Worked for Me
This has been an off year for cozy stories with me. I’m growing less and less enchanted with the type of cozy fantasy written after Legends and Lattes became a breakout hit - not because it’s bad; it just doesn’t work for me. However, I’ve found that I really like Cozy when there are some teeth and some stakes to the story, especially when there are strongly developed internal conflicts and convincing interpersonal relationships. I think Of the Wild largely succeeds at doing something different in the Cozy space. Since it was written before the subgenre got popular, that makes a lot of sense. It’s revealed pretty early that Aeris and his arboreal sanctuary are dying, with Tall Ones at the gates, excited to consume the juicy flesh of children. This could have skewed comedically evil, but instead its just creepy enough to be effective while still not infringing on the wholesome vibes of the book. Wambheim succeeds at establishing high - though not epic - stakes while remaining comfortably within a cozy atmosphere. This through-line - his acceptance of his eventual death and trying to chart a future for his children - is my favorite part of the book. The ending is a bit predictable, but one that was consistent with Wambheim’s foreshadowing and appropriate to the themes of the novel. I wasn’t ever surprised by this book, but I was consistently excited with how Aeris was handled as a character. 

Of the Wild also one of the better takes on found family I’ve seen. The default when authors approach this topic - either intentionally or accidentally - is a relatively permanent situation. Birth family wasn’t great, so a chosen family takes its place. Wambheim takes this a step further, that no family need be permanent. Part of parenting is letting your children go, and Aeris accepts that his charges will leave him when they are ready, though they can stay as long as they wish. He uses the metaphor of a plant, that when it struggles in soil, you try it in a different garden to see if it grows more healthily there. While obviously one hopes for a family situation to always remain what you need, and I think this novella takes seriously the obligations people owe their dependents. It’s also good to acknowledge that found families need not be forever and that there don’t need to be major problems to justify leaving. Family means extending your love, and sometimes loving someone means letting them go. Thanks Sting!

What Didn’t Work for Me
This book felt a lot like House on the Cerulean Sea, both in the good and bad ways. Yes the story is heartwarming and gooey. However, it deals pretty explicitly with kids who have been through traumatic situations. Wambheim’s starting point was less problematic than Klunes, but it still engages with trauma in children that doesn’t quite sit well with me. Some of Aeris’s children were brought home early enough that they likely wouldn’t have much trauma, but others came later after physical abuse by parents, severe malnutrition, etc. There’s a bit of engagement with their situation (the one conversation that touched on this was handled very well), but mostly felt skated over. Obviously I can’t get into Wambheim’s head, but it felt like they wanted to put a spin on the archetype of Fey who steal children, but repositioning Aeris as our hero. Rescuing children from neglectful and traumatic circumstances is a tidy way to let both ideas exist simultaneously, but the follow-through of exploring that trauma didn’t approach what it needed to be. This topic is one that is hard for me to suspend disbelief. Kids grow from trauma in all sorts of ways, but with 24 kids, it’s notable that none seem to have lingering scars that are anything more than surface level. Also … Aeris is remarkably not stressed out by taking care of 24 kids at once. There’s joyful chaos in the house, but I cannot imagine the workload that would require. In the end, it's just a realistic element that got dropped for the vibes of the story. However, it kept snagging at my attention as I read. I’m unsure if I’ll find a cozy book that will be able to successfully tackle raising kids with trauma, or if my demands of such a topic (unfair as they possibly are) precludes those two from existing together. 

From a prose and characterization perspective, I thought that Wambheim spent too much time repeating ideas. I think the attempt was to build up meaning, but I ended up getting tired of the discussions where Aeris reassures William that he’s welcome to stay if he wants, on whatever terms would work for him. William seems blissfully happy to not ask any logistical questions at all, and accepts pretty much everything at face value. Actually, William in general is fairly disappointing from a Romance perspective. In single POV Romances, you’ll always get more depth from the protagonist, but William only exists as part of Aeris’ love story. He doesn’t feel like a character that has a life outside the fey realm he wanders into. Despite only being 140 pages long, I kept feeling like Of the Wild was overwritten, that a page was taken when a few sentences would do. This can work when the prose and themes are doing the heavy lifting, but Of the Wild never achieved that for me. I kept wanting to skim the story and then forcing myself to back up and slow down. 

Conclusion: I enjoyed the protagonist and some of the thematic work around found family, but I struggled with the prose and how the love interest was written.

Novella Bingo Card
I plan on having a novella-themed bingo card this year. I originally mood read and slotted in choices, but at this point I'm close enough that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I still won't read something just for the bingo card (other than the middle grade square), but I can taste a finished card! Here's where I stand so far 

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As an English teacher who mostly works with 6th graders, I quite like Middle Grade Fantasy and think that they get overlooked and undervalued in the genre fiction world. However, novellas aren’t particularly common in the middle grade space, which made it hard to find a good fit if I truly wanted to have a novella themed r/fantasy bingo card, which requires a middle grade book this year. I decided to go with something a bit sillier and younger than I’d normally read in this space; Gumluck is more targeted at 8-9 year-olds than 11-12, and I think it would probably make a great bedtime storybook for kids even younger than 8.

Read If Looking For: sassy ravens, technically compliant wishes, telling the truth isn’t always the right move 

Avoid If You Dislike: goofiness, egregious misunderstandings, lovable loners 

Does it Bingo?  The Afterlife (HM), Middle Grade, Also this one probably fits older protagonist? Gumluck implies he was significantly older at one point but uses magic to keep himself in a child’s body.

I don't think it fits nonhuman protagonist; our narrator is the raven, but Gumluck is the protagonist.

https://preview.redd.it/kld8jk27tseh1.jpg?width=829&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=11240f7af63648a59b99b6aff478859763e6954d

To the other reviews in this readathon, see my announcement post.

Elevator Pitch:
Gumluck is the Very Small Wizard who Lives in a Very Big Hill. The villagers ask him for help, but never say hello or thank you. Gumluck accidentally knocks over the raven Helvetica’s nest, sparking the start of a long friendship and many silly adventures for the series to follow. In this book, Gumluck wants to become the Harvest Hero, a prize given to the most helpful villager - who conveniently has been the crown prince for the past two decades. However, he doesn't realize the villagers look down on him, but he will press on to try and help as many people as he possibly can.

What Worked for Me
 This book had enough humor in it that I enjoyed my time with Gumluck. At first the over-the-top characters and bumbling attitudes annoyed me. However, the farcical vibes were tempered by the dry humor of Helvetica. Without her as our narrator, I think I would have strongly disliked this book. As it stands, she provides good tonal breaks with her dry wit and lovable grumpiness. Is she kind of a stereotypical character? Yes, she is. But I'm a sucker for people who point out the obvious and have no time of other people's quiet niceties, so her bluntness really endeared me to her. She also served as a good mouthpiece to get at various themes for kids who developmentally are still working on inference and abstract concepts.

I also feel like this is a book that will be great for developmentally typical kids in the 3rd grade range. Yes, some people were reading Wheel of Time at that age, but Gumluck is a much more appropriate book for the average kid that age into fantasy. There’s conflict without it being violent. There’s some social skills instruction without it feeling over explained. It's not going to give them nightmares or close enough to reality for them to start overlapping the two. The book has lots of cute illustrations that keep developing readers interest as they bridge into chapter books. Also Helvetica (whom I love dearly), again makes for a great narrator during a read aloud, since gives the story the vibe of an oral tale already, making it a great fit for parents and kids still learning to read.

What Didn’t Work for Me
The biggest strike against this book is that I’m not the target audience for it. It was enjoyable enough, but not one that is going to appeal more broadly to adult audiences or kids who  feel they’ve outgrown ‘books for little kids’. It’s got less edge to it than a Disney Movie, and that tone would have grated on me had I chosen to pick up the sequel. I won't buy a copy for my classroom, as even my low readers are going to bounce off this pretty hard. I will, however, consider giving it as a gift to my friends who are new parents.

Conclusion: most adults won’t enjoy this unless they’re reading it with their kids. However, it’s the type of story I’d have wanted my mom to read to me

Novella Bingo Card
I plan on having a novella-themed bingo card this year. I originally mood read and slotted in choices, but at this point I'm close enough that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I still won't read something just for the bingo card (other than the middle grade square), but I can taste a finished card! Here's where I stand so far 

https://preview.redd.it/du1fneaftseh1.png?width=519&format=png&auto=webp&s=0fe447cb14cc127e1ebbdb7ea0be4008dbc469c7

Sofia Samatar has been on my reading list for a long time. I always figured I’d start with The Winged Histories, but this novella kept getting rave reviews, and I love a school/academia setting. I knew this story dealt with class displacement from the chatter, but I wasn’t prepared for how sharply Samatar wields the pen … or perhaps keyboard. This is yet another author that I have now committed to reading more of; I wanted this project to lessen my TBR, but it has in fact done the exact opposite. 

Read If Looking For: thematically dense stories, nuanced yet archetypical characters, the pointlessness of meetings and committees

Avoid If Looking For: plot heavy books, tidy endings, school settings featuring classroom scenes, happy vibes

Does it Bingo? Judge a Book by its Title, Book Club (2025 Hugo Readalong), and Author of Color

https://preview.redd.it/2lue2lf15leh1.jpg?width=1500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fd1573bbc03f7e7674bd0bb9d2abc73370a6226e

To the other reviews in this readathon, see my announcement post.

Elevator Pitch:
The Fleet travels from mining site to mining site, remaining for generations before making a long journey to a new source of resources. The boy is one of the Chained, laboring in the darkness beneath, and the professor is one of the ankleted, a sort of middle working class. Some of her friends don’t bear any fetters at all. The professor brings the boy out of the darkness, 'liberating' him to her class and installing him as a student at her university. It does not go as smoothly as she'd like. As the two grapple with the chains they bear, they both realize they have much more to learn.

This is a bad description for the book, and I offer my apologies

What Worked for Me
This novella is not subtle about its themes, but neither is it preachy or didactic. I think Samatar does a great job of layering meaning into the story, asking the reader to consider the situations of the characters, but she never quite steps out of the story to speak directly to the reader. At its most obvious is the focus on class differences. Notably, the professor sees herself as having saved the boy. He perceives himself as having lost all connections to his culture and his people, even though his physical situation is better than as a slave-laborer below. He is expected to be grateful, but he finds himself unmoored because the Chained built a cultural identity and community; the boy has become an island. Meanwhile the professor ends up reckoning with her own place in the system, passed over for papers and promotions and fighting for any scraps of recognition from the unfettered elite. However, her position of power over another group gives her a sense of artificial freedom. This freedom becomes threatened as she realizes the inadequacy of her own 'help,' but pushing further goes beyond the bounds of what has been deemed acceptable by those above her in the hierarchy. There are some layers introduced early that get peeled back beautifully during the second half of the novella, a really excellent use of foreshadowing. 

The earliest, and most obvious, tell to get the reader thinking, is that the Chained and those with indigo anklets never get named. Only those without any fetters at all receive names in this book, a not-so-subtle nod to whom society sees as human, and who is a faceless cog in the machine. This comes to a head beautifully when Gil, the professor’s coworker, who considers her a dear friend, unleashes an angry tirade that shows that even his own support and bonding with the professor end when she does not act in accordance with his wishes. It is only in this moment that the professor’s relationship with the boy begins to truly shift to something akin to equals. Until she acknowledges her own enslavement, she cannot see how she enslaves others. 

In a really phenomenal interview (you should go read it alongside this Novella. I sort of wish I’d read it before, to be honest), Samatar talks about how this book was born from the murder of George Flyod at the hands of Minneapolis Police, and the sudden flowering of DEI work at colleges. She says “I was interested in this sort of central contradiction of diversity work, which is something that is almost posed against itself, to the extent that the formation of the committee is the work.” I hadn’t made this overt connection while reading the book, but it’s the type of really successful allegory that only speculative fiction can execute. By divorcing an idea so much from its realistic particulars, you’re able to strike at the heart of a topic in interesting and novel ways. It’s part of the beauty of this genre, and few authors succeed at bridging two worlds as successfully as Samatar did. 

This book is going to resonate most with readers who like to engage with these deeper meanings. The worldbuilding and characters and plot are all skillfully executed, but ultimately in service to getting you to contemplate and reflect. While the chains and anklets are objectively horrific, they also become ingrained cultural elements for the community, symbols built from their communal experiences. Samatar seeks to go beyond 'chain bad' and push the reader to go deeper than the surface level understanding of oppression that is more common in speculative fiction. It’s a much more nuanced take than most Dystopian explorations of classism manage to achieve. 

What Didn’t Work for Me
There’s nothing about this novella that I can say is bad or poorly done. I truly think that it executed vision flawlessly, down to an ambiguous ending that is likely the bright spot before something truly horrible happens. The worst I can say about it is that I think it’s going to fade from my memory, whereas my favorites tend to linger in my brain. There aren’t any substantive or meaningful complaints from me though, and I thought this is the type of novella I’d like to continue to see get Hugo nominations. 

Conclusion: a theme heavy exploration of classism in academic institutions, melded with a science fiction slave narrative

Novella Bingo Card
I plan on having a novella-themed bingo card this year. I originally mood read and slotted in choices, but at this point I'm close enough that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I still won't read something just for the bingo card (other than the middle grade square), but I can taste a finished card! Here's where I stand so far 

https://preview.redd.it/b0gwhiv95leh1.png?width=477&format=png&auto=webp&s=e313e397e273387f3f334de3be04a0cf1b315555

This is the third, and probably final, Literary leaning novella I’m reading for this project. If we’re nitpicking labels, Lanny is probably closest to Magical Realism, but I think it generally defies easy categorization. It took me a while to settle into Porter’s rhythm, but portions of this book had me in a stranglehold. I think it’s a more approachable entry point into Literary writing, only one step beyond The Spear Cuts Through Water. It’s a personal and intimate window into the souls orbiting around a very special young boy named Lanny and the village where he lives.

Read If Looking For: experimental storytelling techniques, nature and humanity elementally joined, gritty human relationships, joyful human relationships

Avoid If Looking For: good dads, the magic to make sense, pain-free books, standard narration and dialogue

Does it Bingo? Older Protagonist (one of the two older leads fits HM, the other doesn’t), One Word Title, NonHuman Protagonist

https://preview.redd.it/qebypg4jpeeh1.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=44e4d3689ad22c8bb06145cfdee48fe4ab46316a

To the other reviews in this readathon, see my announcement post.

Elevator Pitch:
This novel is split into three sections. The first explores the interior lives of several people important to Lanny’s life. His parents Jolie and Rob, an older artist named Pete who bonds with Lanny during art lessons, and the mythical creature Dead Papa Toothwort who has been waiting for Lanny’s arrival. Lanny is oblivious, asks strange questions, and lives full of joy. He also is in tune with the supernatural, able to defy logic and physics. Part 2 expands into hundreds of snippets in the aftermath of Lanny’s disappearance, where the blame is placed on Pete (who gets cast by the town as a pedophilic gay man). You’ll enter the mind of townsfolk, visitors, and our core cast of humans. Part three sees them seeking out Lanny in the domain of Dead Papa Toothwort, and mostly reverts to the original prose style. 

Throughout the book, we never experience Lanny’s POV.

What Worked for Me
Who is the main character of this novel? Who is the protagonist? I’d argue that none of our viewpoint characters are actually protagonists. The closest is probably Dead Papa Toothwort, but he disappears for the entire middle section of the book. I know many see Lanny as the protagonist, as he is the center of all our main (viewpoint) character’s emotional orbit. I, however, felt like the town itself was the protagonist. It pushed the story along and carried far more complexity and thematic weight than Lanny himself did. In part this is because Dead Papa Toothwort is almost the town itself.  Throughout Part 1, he hears fragments that dance and curve across the page. People gossip about a woman who gained weight, about tonight’s casserole, the tits on the barmaid, and burping when you’ve had too much red bull. There’s joy, but there’s darkness lurking underneath the surface. Dead Papa Toothwort himself revels in death and violence, including a particularly disturbing moment when Jolie killed a Hedgehog (to end its misery, to be fair), with a knife that got too much use. 

In American fiction, small towns are typically either idyllic utopias or redneck central. I don’t know if the stereotypes of small towns in the UK matches, but Porter crafted one of the most realistic portraits I’ve seen. My hometown wasn’t quite as small as where Lanny lives, but the smiling faces covering an insular and guarded community was spot on. For those who belong, there is an easy familiarity. For those who do not, it is nearly impossible to ever find true acceptance. The rotten core grows and festers in Part 2, as you see extraordinary circumstances bring out the worst, not the best in the community. Everybody knows everybody elses' business, and dirty laundry gets aired when the chips are down. I am realizing that all this sounds horrible, but I think it’s not too far off from any insular community (small towns, churches, weaving guilds, etc), and small towns are simply a good encapsulation of one part of the human experience. Dead Papa Toothwort himself is something between village and nature, the history of the town bundled up with its life today. 

Porter’s exploration of characters is really intense. He gets at some pretty heavy topics, such as spousal resentment, grief, and self-doubt. The writing here is raw, like you could claw apart the tissue paper separating you from these humans. They all felt so very real, even as Lanny was something of a manic pixie dream child. These darker portraits get treated with the same amount of care that Peter and Lanny’s shared joy is given. Reading this book is like walking through a thin forest, stepping rapidly between shadow and light, where the constant contrast is as natural as breathing. There isn't any sense of whiplash, but the book will swallow you whole if you let it.

All of this gets blown up in Part 2, which was far and away my favorite portion of this story. Porter swaps abruptly from an extended study of four characters to bouncing rapidly between perspectives, all focused on Lanny’s disappearance. There is Pete’s interrogation by the police, pub regulars complaining about the crowds, kids writing letters apologizing for how they bullied Lanny, phone calls Jodie makes asking for news, and on and on and on. Each bite feels fully realized, a puzzle piece to the oppressive atmosphere of the town. For those familiar with Scott McCloud’s writing on the underlying structure of comics, this section is a huge set of Aspect to Aspect Transitions, showing a collection of separate moments connected to a single specific moment in space and time. They all came together into something that I couldn't put down.

There’s a brutal restraint in Part 2. Some characters get a page devoted to their thoughts, but typically you’ll live in the brian of a character for three or four sentences, many of which are dialogue without any explicit context given. I think this chunk of reading was perhaps the single best piece of writing I’ve consumed this year. It's clear while still taking risks; it is emotional without telling you how to feel. I’m not sure whether the whole book is enough to put it in my top 10 of the year (out of an estimated 200 titles), but it’ll be in the conversation for sure. 

There’s a lot of writing here, but I still don’t really feel like I’ve captured what it's like to read this book. A really unusual and unique experience, and each of the three parts of the book uses completely different tools to break from the mold of how stories are told. I haven’t even gotten into some of the cool bits, such as how Dead Papa Toothwort got depicted. To avoid rambling too much, I will leave you with this quote (there are so many good spots in this book to pull from)

>His body is a suit of bark-armor with the initials of long-dead teenage lovers carved in the surface.

Is the same character as

>He splits and wobbles, divides and reassembles, coughs up a plastic pot and a petrified condom, briefly pauses as a smashed fiberglass bath, stumbles and rips off the mask, feels his face, and finds it made of long-buried tannic acid bottles. Victorian Rubbish.

He’s just got such a good duality to him, and Porter really captured the essence of something weird that is both familiar and utterly unknown. Compare this to the unvarnished reality of the human characters, and it's a really great contrast. 

What Didn’t Work for Me
Clearly I had a lot of good things to say about this book. However, from a pure enjoyment standpoint, this book triggered my secondhand embarrassment so much. This is a testament to how well-rendered his characters are. It was like watching acting without a soundtrack. My discomfort means his writing was achieving what it set out to do. Excellent craft, but not always a fun read for me. I also generally thought the final third of the book was the least interesting by far, as it felt like Porter got a little heavy handed and direct with his messaging about his various characters. Pulled the story into something a little more artificial, perhaps?

I’m also just really, really burnt out on asshole dads right now (asshole parents more generally; lots of shitty moms too, though it doesn’t apply to Lanny). This is novella #20, and Shitty Dads have been in 11 of them, across a fairly wide spread of subgenres. If anyone has recs of protagonists who don’t have horrible relationships with their parents, I’d appreciate it. Anyways, I think the dad struggled the most as a viewpoint character. He’s much more unlikable; both spouses bear responsibility for their marital issues, but him moreso. He realizes during Lanny’s absence that he quite literally doesn’t feel emotions (or believe that others actually feel things), and that it's more convenient for him that Lanny doesn’t come back. He’s also a hallmark ‘big city’ main character from a Hallmark Movie wrapped in a Literary trench coat. The village isn’t perfect, but the big city has zero positive things associated with it, and Rob is the stand-in for all things urban. Tough for me to know if this would have bugged me if I hadn’t been encountering it so much recently.

Conclusion: I think it’s an excellent pick for anyone interested in a magical realism story that is on the light and readable side of experimental Literature.

Novella Bingo Card
I plan on having a novella-themed bingo card this year. I originally mood read and slotted in choices, but at this point I'm close enough that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I still won't read something just for the bingo card (other than the middle grade square), but I can taste a finished card! Here's where I stand so far 

https://preview.redd.it/4fth3bl2peeh1.png?width=476&format=png&auto=webp&s=f02b190930151d82b3c58ec62c97c7fd36ece586

Last year one of my favorite reads was Pueyo’s debut novel But Not Too Bold, which was a delightfully gothic monster romance - with an emphasis on monster. Cabaret in Flames was one of my most anticipated releases of the year, and I’m mostly disappointed in it. As with some of my other less positive reviews, I still think it's worth a look for readers who are excited about the specific premise and tone of Cabaret in Flames, but not for a more general audience. 

Read If Looking For: characters processing intense childhood sexual trauma, monster romance, stories unable to be separated from their setting (Brazil, in this case)

Avoid If You Dislike: why the fuck won’t you two just talk to each other!, uninspired prose

Does it Bingo? Judge a Book by its Title, Translated (HM, Portuguese), Published in 2026, Feast your Eyes on This (humans), Author of Color (She’s Argentine-Brazillian, and Race definitions are very different in South America than the US and the UK. HM)

https://preview.redd.it/0v4ewhedl7eh1.png?width=500&format=png&auto=webp&s=00ca6f5f0216ba933895a26cd6147596968834fe

To the other reviews in this readathon, see my announcement post.

Elevator Pitch:
Ariadne is a doctor, and her patients are Guls, creatures with unnaturally long lives who can feed only on human flesh and blood. When a strang Gul comes looking for her 5-years vanished mentor, she is forced to confront her dark past that Erik saved her from. This Gul, Quaint, wants to find Erik and asks for Ariadne’s help as they travel to a Rio De Janerio club that serves Guls almost exclusively. 

What Worked for Me
Cabaret in Flames does its best to balance a few different tones. Obviously strong horror and romance components, though both take a bit more of a backseat than I was expecting. A heavier emphasis was placed on the psychological intensity of Ariadne processing her trauma, as well as some mystery elements as she searches for Erik. Plus, political unrest in Brazil hangs over the story like a baby mobile. Unlike some other books that jumped around quite a bit, I thought this one actually had a really good sense of scope. Yes Pueyo is mashing together a bunch of different elements while also exploring multiple locations and plot points, but I never felt like the pacing suffered because of that. Even Ariadne’s physical disabilities - she is a quadruple amputee by the hands of the same men who raped her repeatedly as a child - were handled excellently, a constant presence in her life even though Pueyo chose to not make this disability central to the story.

Pueyo’s worldbuilding around Guls was interesting. We see several different personalities, and the novella avoids painting them as a monolith. As with her previous novella, Pueyo provides us with a story where their monstrous nature isn’t actually the scary part - a romantic plotline would be hard to weave together without this. The real cruelty comes from the ones who choose to do horrible things, not simply that they eat other humans. There were some light worldbuilding elements about how many Guls consumed their human friends who had reached the end of thei natural life, and I generally would have loved to see more of Gul culture.

What Didn’t Work for Me
Pueyo’s prose kept me hooked in But Not Too Bold despite monster romances not really being my thing. It’s a book that I shouldn’t have liked, but which captivated me because of her skill with language. Cabaret in Flames did not have the same page-turner intensity, the jewel-toned language, or the deft skill with dialogue that is both convincingly realistic and cinematically dynamic. Instead, the whole story feels like a foggy day. Everything seems a little muted. Ariadne’s psychological struggles covered some really dark content, but I never felt the emotional intensity that I assume Pueyo was going for. The Guls are not inherently evil, but I thought that the level of gore in this story was far more restrained than it should have been, especially when I read this book so close to The Salt Grows Heavy. 

There’s just nothing that I can grab in this book and lift above my head to say, this was great, and I wish more authors wrote like this. I can’t even blame loss of meaning between Portugese and English, because Pueyo translated both of her novellas on her own - which, major kudos for that. Everything just felt a little tepid in this book, like Pueyo was afraid of going bigger and bolder with the story. This just barely avoided being a book I didn’t finish, and only because Pueyo is an author whose previous work I enjoyed. I was hopeful that she would become an auto-buy author for me, but now I’ll probably only pick up her next work, a full length novel, if it gets good reviews. 

Conclusion: an underwhelming second novel. Only recommended if you like dark romance whose characters have intense trauma. Even in that specific niche, I’m sure there are better examples out there. 

Novella Bingo Card
I plan on having a novella-themed bingo card this year. I originally mood read and slotted in choices, but at this point I'm close enough that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I still won't read something just for the bingo card (other than the middle grade square), but I can taste a finished card! Here's where I stand so far  

https://preview.redd.it/duf6kv2ml7eh1.png?width=475&format=png&auto=webp&s=7b64a423ac72e003b3e4eff1f4cf75d0c2e1614b