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. 

Butterfly Effects by Seanan McGuire

 

Yes! Yes yes yes! This is the book I have been waiting for for years!

I love 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). 

I was overjoyed when Tor and NetGalley awarded me an eARC of the latest Incryptid book, in exchange for an honest review. 

The book picks up with Sarah’s story, her first stint as narrator in several years - but interestingly, she is not alone. Several chapters are also from Antimony’s perspective, splitting up the perspectives in what I think is a first in this series.

After Artie was shattered and put back together again, I have been very sad. I loved Artie and my heart was broken when he and Sarah finally realized their loves for each other were not unrequited only to have Artie effectively die. Knowing how Seanan McGuire writes, I was not expecting a happy ending for those two. So imagine my surprise when I got to read this book! I won’t spoil any details but I was overjoyed at how Ms. McGuire deftly handled these plot threads and I was very happy with how things turned out.

I can’t wait to see what happens next!

I listened to this audiobook at 2x speed. 

Foundling Fathers by Meg Elison

 

I read The Pill by Meg Elison when it was nominated for the Hugo Award a while back - it was one of the best stories I have read in years and it still haunts me to this day. I read her novel Number One Fan a few years ago, but it was too rapey and unrealistic for me to fully enjoy. But when I saw her new book by Ms. Elison on NetGalley, I eagerly requested an eARC in exchange for an honest review because of the description - Foundling Fathers sounded like a spiritual sequel to Clone High, a delightfully weird cartoon that I loved many years ago. 

In this book, we quickly learn that Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, and Washington were cloned somehow in a near future and raised as brothers on an isolated island and were taught that it was still the 1700s. The plot kicks off when Franklin finds someone’s cell phone in the bathroom. 

I really enjoyed this book, but my only complaints felt like it was too short - it felt like it could’ve been the first third of a much longer book, and I felt the ending was too abrupt. But I really enjoyed the style and the characterization. A fun read for our bisesquicentennial!

Hell's Heart by Alexis Hall

 

I will totally pick up a book because it has a cool cover. I may not read it right away, but I will pick it up. That’s what I did with Hell’s Heart. There is a cute independent bookstore in my town that has a little free library outside of it in which the bookstore owners often put out advanced reader copies they are done with. I found Hell’s Heart there a few months ago and liked the octopus/tentacle monster/eldritch horror vibe of the cover so I picked it up. When I saw the audiobook on NetGalley a few months later I requested it because that cover still slapped and I hadn’t had time to read it yet. And I’m so glad that I did!

I will NOT tell you how deep I was into the book before I realized it was a version of Moby Dick (but in space with Jovian leviathans and sapphic romances). I probably should have realized it sooner. But that doesn’t matter because this book was amazing! I couldn’t stop listening to it, I was so into the characters, and I really enjoyed the writing style with faux authorial asides to the reader. Highly recommended!

This Will Be Interesting, by E. B. Asher

 

I hate deckled edges and I love sprayed and painted edges. Deckled edges are when the pages of a paper book don’t all evenly line up. it’s how books used to look a long time ago but nowadays it’s just an obnoxious affectation, in my opinion. I have repeatedly refused to buy a physical book in a bookstore because of deckled edges - the tactile experience is so incredibly unpleasant that I’d rather not read the book. 

Sprayed edges, however, are a trend I wholeheartedly endorse. I love going into a bookstore and seeing a book pop with color on the top and side! I don’t know what it is that makes it seem so fun and enticing! I first found E.B. Asher’s first book, This Will Be Fun, at a local bookstore because of the sprayed edges. Something about the title and cover and design called to me so I bought it on impulse, and I enjoyed it! I didn’t love how much of the high-magic world replicated 21st century technology but I really enjoyed the characters and the quest. So I was quite pleased when I got an eARC of the sequel, This Will Be Interesting, from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. 

This sequel was much better than the first novel! Like the first book, this novel traded chapters between its 3 POV characters (which I think map onto the 3 different coauthors who make up the pen name of E.B. Asher, but I’m not 100% sure of that).  But these characters felt much more interesting and well rounded than the ones in the first book. The plot was fun and the romances felt believable (in a fantasy romance novel kind of way). I would totally read another book by this trio again!

Your Behavior Will Be Monitored by Justin Feinstein

As I’ve said recently, Tachyon has become one of the publishers I seek out work by - they have a really good track record of publishing books I enjoy. When I was requesting ARCs of their recent stuff, they also sent me a copy of this book - and I’m really glad they did! This is a first novel by an author I’m going to be looking out for in the future. It is not quite an epistolary novel but it is similar- it is comprised of messages and chat logs and similar things. It is a near future novel set at an AI tech company that is working on creating an AI that makes targeted personal commercials. It was a breezy quick read that always made me want to read just a few pages more, and the ending was pleasantly surprising. Very enjoyable!

Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher

 

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!