Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey

This book was just horrible (in the best way possible!) 

I think I first became aware of Sarah Gailey’s work when I read about their hippo riders in a review on tor dot com and thought “that sounds super fun!”  It was super fun, and after devouring River of Teeth and Taste of Marrow, I have always looked for new works by this author. I loved Magic For Liars and the Echo Wife, and Just Like Home was terrifying in a wonderful way. Last year’s Spread Me was also quite enjoyable horror in a sexy John Carpenter’sThe Thing kind of way. 

I was intrigued when I got their new book Make Me Better from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I enjoyed it but I wished there had been content warnings for pregnancy loss and dead babies. 

This book was so so so so creepy in a looming eldritch horror way where you’re not sure if the way humans treat each other is actually the scariest thing in the world. 

It follows Celia, a woman lost in her life, as she goes to an island cult to try to find herself and a friend who had used to live on the island. 

The book is intricately constructed with multiple timelines and some truly monstrous characters. Every time I turned a page I hoped that characters would realize what was going on and get out of their terrible situations. 

This wasn’t an easy read but I’m very glad I read it. 

Year of the Mer by L.D. Lewis

I often request books from NetGalley based on the positive buzz I see on blue sky. So when a number of authors that I like started talking about this book, I thought to myself: hey, I should check this out. I enjoy a good fairytale retelling and I enjoy mermaids so why not? Sadly, after finishing this book, I failed to see what all of the hype was about. I found this book profoundly boring. The book is told from the perspective of a princess who is the granddaughter of Ariel (you know, the little mermaid) and her bodyguard/love interest. The fact that both are women is practically meaningless because neither of them has any character to speak of. It’s hard to imagine how the book would’ve been different if either or Both of them had been men (or cardboard boxes). The visit to the underwater realm was not interesting. The Struggle for power made me question why I cared whether the protagonist succeeded or failed. The answer ended up being that I did not care in the slightest. I wish I knew what everyone else kept seeing in this book. It was well written on a sentence and paragraph level, don’t get me wrong. But I just did not like the story.

The Many by Sylvain Neuvel

 

I remember picking up Sylvain Neuvel’s first book Sleeping Giants, from the library when it came out. The format was interesting (it was practically an epistolary novel) and I love giant robots, so I enjoyed it quite a bit, but as the series went on, it felt staler and I enjoyed the conclusion less than I enjoyed the initial mysteries. I never ended picking up his second trilogy, but I was intrigued enough by the concept of his new standalone novel The Many to request it on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

(By the way, I despise the title. No one will pick this book up based on the title alone). 

This book is an interesting twist on the zombie pandemic - a tick bite makes a woman bite people and who she bites she mind merges with. Whoever they bite merge minds with them ending in a Borg- like collective consciousness. 

I really liked some things about this book - the idea that people with merged minds would be obsessed with sex because they were sharing orgasms makes perfect sense, and the autistic police officer character was very well handled. But it is clear that this author doesn’t know any Jewish people in real life - his Jewish doctor character is full of unpleasant stereotypes and she also refers to the house of worship as a “church” which is laughably wrong as well as offensive. 

But problems aside, this book was a real page turner - I couldn’t put it down even when I should’ve been reading something else. It’ll be an excellent beach read or airport book (in the best possible ways). 

What We Are Seeking by Cameron Reed

I had never before heard of Cameron Reed before this book, but I love a good first contact story and was intrigued when I got an advanced reader copy from Tor and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This book reminded me a bit of Hellspark by Janet Kagan, which I had just recently read for my book club at work, but What We Are Seeking was far superior (and I enjoyed Hellspark a bunch). 

What We Are Seeking follows John, a doctor from a human colony who joins another colony on a semi hostile planet populated by aliens referred to as “basket men” for their weaving capability. The distinction between plant and animal life on this planet is minimal, with the life cycles intertwined between the two. The human colonists are trying to learn to communicate with these aliens, as well as deal with an observer from Earth who seems rather posthuman in her development. John has to deal with the aliens and the Earther as well as with the hidebound anti gay pro marriage human colonists, whose background differs greatly from that of the liberal anti marriage society of his home planet. This book is a quiet, thoughtful novel with minimal action and a great deal of conversation in the best possible way. I highly recommend it and would not be surprised to see it on next year’s Nebula or Hugo shortlists. 

Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher (Audiobook)

 

In the past 4 years, or so, I have become a HUGE fan of T. Kingfisher aka Ursula Vernon. 

Ms. Vernon is the author of the Hamster Princess books, which both of my daughters have enjoyed (as have I!). Those books were my introduction to her, along with her social media presence, which I found through Seanan McGuire. 

Ordinarily, I don’t like horror. I never wanted to watch scary movies as a kid. I got nightmares from E.T.  But based on recommendations I read the Twisted Ones and The Holllow Places and I realized that I loved Ms. Vernon’s writing and I could make it through the scary parts unscathed with her as my guide. 

I started devouring her back catalog and putting all new releases on hold at the library.  I have subscribed to her Patreon and I convinced my wife to read Nettle and Bone, which she loved (as did I). I even backed the kickstarter for the rerelease of Digger, which was wonderful. 

I was very excited when I heard she had a new book out in 2026 called Wolf Worm and I was even more excited when I got an eARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. 

This book was super creepy in the best ways! I will not be recommending it to my wife for that reason but to anyone that liked her other more horror-y books this is a slam dunk. The protagonist, like many in her recent novels, is a not young woman who reads as slightly neurodivergent who ends up in a creepy situation. She is a scientific illustrator in the post Civil War south who gets a job in a creepy house painting bugs for a creepy naturalist. I won’t spoil the big reveal but suffice it to say I was surprised and pleased by how the plot resolved. Very satisfying!

I enjoyed the narration by Mary Robinette Kowal very much. I listened to this book at 2x speed. 

Strixhaven: Omens of Chaos (Magic: The Gathering) by Seanan McGuire

 Where to begin? I never played Magic:The Gathering when it came out. I was in college and I loved D&D and my only thoughts of Magic when it came out was that it was like a dumbed down version of D&D and I snobbishly turned up my nose at it because it was for kids and its parent company bought D&D from TSR and was trying to ruin it with 3rd edition - I fully admit, I didn’t know anything about it, it was an opinion based on ignorance. My brother-in-law has been teaching me how to play Magic recently and I am realizing how wrong I was and how fun and complex the game is! 

From following her on social media, I was aware how much Seanan McGuire loved Magic, and I just adore Seanan McGuire’s body of work.  (Note: I review a bunch of her books so I am copying part of some of my other reviews here to save time.). She has quickly become my favorite living writer and I feel very lucky that she is so prolific. I was first introduced to her work when her book Parasite, written as Mira Grant, was nominated for a Hugo Award. I loved it and quickly devoured the Newsflesh series before I realized that Mira Grant and Seanan McGuire were the same person. 

I started reading her works under her own name, starting with Sparrow Hill Road, which is amazing, but I picked it because I was intimidated by her long running October Daye series. When Incryptid was nominated for the Best Series Hugo in 2018, I dove into that and I loved it! It is probably my second favorite series by McGuire (Velveteen Vs. holds a special place in my heart). 

And ever since I was little, I loved books set in magical schools. I still have my dogeared copy of The Worst Witch and have read it to both of my children. So when I found out my favorite author was writing a magical school book based on a game I liked I preordered a copy right away! Then I was lucky enough to get an eARC from NetGalley and the publisher. 

I loved this book so much! You don’t need to know anything about Magic to enjoy it (which is good, because I still don’t know that much lore about the game). 5 students from different planes of existence are recruited to come study at a magical university and they learn about each other and themselves in this book. The characters feel very real - none of them are perfect and they still learning who they are and what type of people they want to be. I enjoyed this book thoroughly and hope it sells well so that Ms. McGuire can write all the sequels she wants to!

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews

 

I love my wife very much, and I especially love talking books with her - we both enjoy reading but we do it in our own ways. My wife reads what she likes but doesn’t often engage with genre conversations. 

My wife has enjoyed reading and listening to Ilona Andrews books for years but I haven’t tried any until now. In fact, a discussion of their books is how I realized that my wife doesn’t like secondary world fantasy, which I love. If it’s not connected to the real world, she doesn’t usually connect to it. 

When we had heard that Ilona Andrews had a new book coming out with Tor we were both excited to see what the they would come up with, and I was so happy when I got an advanced copy of the audiobook on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

My wife started listening to it first - and she noped out before she got halfway through. She didn’t care for the setting and was bored. Undeterred, I began to listen to it. I enjoyed it much more than my tie did, but I found it rather uneven. When a book is cowritten by two people, I shouldn’t be able to see the seams, but in this book there were sections that really felt like they were not written by the same person - there were some wild tonal shifts. The protagonist is from earth but someone got transported into the world of her favorite fantasy series. She has reread it so many times that she knows much of it by heart and starts to try to use her knowledge to cash in and make a name for herself as an information broker. 

The protagonist is by far the weakest and least interesting part of this book - the world she is in is much richer and three dimensional, and she is so boring and forgettable. Other than that, it is a fun book with excellent side characters. (Several of them had similar sounding names, which didn’t work well in audio.). 

One other minor complaint- this book doesn’t have an ending - it just stops. It is clearly the first part of a series, but instead of feeling like an exciting cliffhanger the ending feels like their typewriter just ran out of ribbon. 

I enjoyed this enough to look forward to book 2. But I’d borrow it from the library instead of buying it.