Fate's Bane by C. L. Clark

 

This book was very interesting- I didn’t know anything about the book or the author when I got an eARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. (I think I requested it confusing the author for KJ Parker).  This was a small scale fantasy novel with a sapphic romance between a clan leader’s daughter and the daughter of a rival clan leader who is a captive being raised alongside the other children of the clan. The magic was fascinating, but I never really felt the romance. When two characters get together as children and then hook up as young teens, it is very hard for me to take their “forever love”seriously. They’re still kids for goodness sake! I also had a hard time accepting that the narrator could forgive the other girl after the duel (I don’t want spoil things here so that’s all I’ll say). The structure of the ending was also very interesting. I wouldn’t say that I loved it, but I’m glad that I read it.

Joke Farming by Elliott Kalan

 

I first encountered Elliott Kalan when his podcast, the Flophouse, did a bonus episode in conjunction with The Greatest Generation to review Star Trek V. I fell in love with him as a podcaster when I listened to I, Podius, the I, Claudius rewatch podcast he did with John Hodgman. After that I started listening to the Flophouse regularly, and I realized that he was the writer of Spider-Man and the X-Men, which was hilarious (that’s where the Sauron cancer meme comes from). So when I heard him talking about an upcoming nonfiction book of his about comedy, I knew I had to read it. He is IMHO the funniest member of the original peaches - I think because his clever style of comedy dovetails well with my own interests. 

This book was stellar. It would be easy for a book about joke creation and construction to end up being dry and clinical but this book is anything but. Kalan’s signature wit comes through on every page. I cannot recommend this enough. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. 

A Hole in the Sky by Peter F Hamilton

I love the books of Peter F Hamilton! I love the Commonwealth books so much! I still remember the first time I read Pandora’s Star - specifically the chilling and alien sections from MorningLightMountain’s point of view - and I wish I could go back and read it again for the first time. 

I also really enjoyed  the Void trilogy, and I adore Great North Road. 

When I finished reviewing the Salvation Sequence by Peter F. Hamilton, I said that I looking forward to more. And I was not disappointed when I got an eARC of A Hole in the Sky in exchange for an honest review - it was fantastic! I love Hamilton’s space opera, and I love a good generation ship story, and this was so much fun! 

I didn’t realize that this book was a YA book when I began it, so in some ways it came across as a breath of fresh air. Some of the sex and violence in Hamilton‘s other books gets a little grim, and it was a pleasure to have a teenaged female protagonist in this book that I wasn’t going to have to worry about. 

The mysteries of how the people on the generation ship lost their access to technology were well plotted and well revealed. I didn’t want to put this book down because I kept wanting to find out what was going to happen next. Highly recommended. 

The Everlasting by Alix Harrow

 

I first heard of Alix Harrow when her short story “A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies” was nominated for a Hugo Award. I read it, and I loved it. When her first novel came out, The Ten Thousand Door of January, I read it right away, but was a little disappointed. The book felt disjointed, and I didn’t care for the protagonist or her struggles very much. I felt like the author didn’t successfully make the leap from short story to novel.  

I read Ms. Harrow’s two fractured fairytale novelas when they were nominated for the Hugos and I enjoyed them, although they felt a bit glib (I think in part because I’m getting a little tired of the hard-drinking, Devil-May-care protagonist trope and because I’d read other  fairytale retellings that lined up with my tastes more).

But OMG Starling House! That book was a massive leveling up - one of the absolute best books I read the year it came out. I loved it so much!!! I remember listening to the audiobook while driving on a foggy fall night and feeling throughly spooked out in the most enjoyable way. 

So of course I was excited when the publisher and NetGalley granted me an eARC of a new work by Ms. Harrow. The Everlasting was a book I hadn’t heard much about and didn’t even read a blurb of before I started so I didn’t know what to expect. The beginning made it seem like a fantasy novel but then it became so much more! A story about time travel and national identity and the lies we tell ourselves, I couldn’t stop devouring it because I just had to know what happened next. This book, after Starling House, really cements Alix Harrow as a major talent and a must-read author for me. 

The Time Traveler's Passport collection

  

This is another of Amazon’s themed short story collections by top authors. This time, the stories are all time travel themed and the authors are John Scalzi, R. F. Kuang, Peng Shepherd, Kaliane Bradley, Olivie Blake, and P. Djèlí Clark. This one was a real mixed bag for me. The Scalzi story was enjoyable and clever but with a lack of characterization - something I have come to expect from this author, and it didn’t hurt the story at all. The Kuang story was brutal and breathtaking and the protagonist made a particularly violent choice towards the end that made me dislike them intensely again, not a surprise from this author. And the Clark piece was haunting and sadly realistic. The real standout for me was the story by Peng - I’d never read anything by this author before and I will look out for them in the future. The other pieces were much, much weaker. I might’ve been happier skipping them entirely. I disliked the Bailey story almost as much as I disliked her debut novel (which was a lot). And the Blake story didn’t even feel like science fiction. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. 

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025 edited by Nnedi Okorafor and John Joseph Adams

I always said I never used to like anthologies because of the tonal shifts and the variability in quality of the stories. However, I have really started to really enjoy these best of the year anthologies - it’s a great way for someone like me, who usually prefers single author short story collections, to catch up on recent short fiction. There were some Hugo nominees that I had read before in here that I remembered, but much of this collection was new to me. There was a particularly haunting tale about a family using a device to remove memories, originally intended to prevent trauma, being overused with disastrous consequences, that still sticks with me. 

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. 

Snake Eater by T. Kingfisher

 

I don’t like horror - or at least I thought I didn’t. I never wanted to watch scary movies as a kid. I got nightmares from E.T. so I never saw anything with Freddy or Jason. But after reading and enjoying The Twisted Ones and The Holllow Places by T. Kingfisher, I realized that I can enjoy horror by the right author. After all, T. Kingfisher is also Ursula Vernon, the author of the Hamster Princess books, which my daughters and I love, as well as the Saint of Steel series, Thornhedge, Nettle and Bone, and a bunch of other books I have adored in recent years. So of course I was going to request an eARC of her new novel, Snake Eater from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. And I am SO glad that I did because it was fantastic. Like the Twisted Ones, the protagonist is a woman with a dog who moves to a small town and ends up living someplace a bit creepy where creepy things start happening. There is a delightful cast of oddball supporting characters and the dog, of course, is a very good dog who is just fine in the end. 

Like in The Hollow Places, the characters are amazingly detailed and feel so real and the fantastical elements impinge on the story so gradually that you never lose your suspension of misbelief. The mysteries are meaty and satisfying, though the final reveal felt a little out of left field. Only a little though - the wackiness of the museum of oddities setting did help sell it. It worked in the context mostly, but it was the only  weak point in an otherwise excellent novel. I’m so glad I read this book! Much thanks to NetGalley and the publisher!