Book #106 of 2026: Songs of the Dead by Brandon Sanderson and Peter Orullian (The Strata Wars #1) [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with the first author.] This collaborative foray into the urban fantasy genre leaves a lot to be desired, and reading between the lines of the co-writers’ public statements, it sounds like the …
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Book #102 of 2026: Magician’s Gambit by David Eddings (The Belgariad #3) I continue to struggle with how generic this 80s fantasy series seems to me, like The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Prydain with the more interesting worldbuilding, character, and plot details sanded down. It’s very much a product of its …
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Book #101 of 2026: Gregor and the Code of Claw by Suzanne Collins (The Underland Chronicles #5) This series has had its ups and downs, but it concludes on a high note that ties everything together rather gracefully. Following the cliffhanger from the last volume, the story resumes with the humans and their allies in …
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Book #94 of 2026: As Many Souls as Stars by Natasha Siegel This title offers an exquisite toxic lesbian horror-fantasy romance that is easily my top new read of 2026 so far. It’s everything that I wanted and didn’t quite get from last year’s Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, whose angsty vampires never …
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Book #91 of 2026: Queen of Sorcery by David Eddings (The Belgariad #2) More interesting and distinctive than the first volume in this series, but not to the degree I feel obligated to bump my rating up at all. I’m starting to understand why people say the authors’ later standalone novel The Redemption of Althalus …
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Book #90 of 2026: Gregor and the Marks of Secret by Suzanne Collins (The Underland Chronicles #4) This penultimate volume is easily the strongest of its series since the debut, largely for dispensing with the tired structure of yet another ancient prophecy sending our returning tween hero on yet another quest. (Granted, those elements both …
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Book #89 of 2026: Vigil by George Saunders This one is a bit of a head-scratcher for me. The writing is absolutely gorgeous, which suggests that I should probably go ahead and read the author’s earlier novel Lincoln in the Bardo, as I’ve seen several reviews of this title comparing it disfavorably to that. But …
Book #86 of 2026: The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald (Princess Irene and Curdie #1) Surprisingly readable for a fantasy novel first published in 1872, with a warm tone reminiscent of genre successors like J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, or Diana Wynne Jones. The plot is kind of a mess by …
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Book #80 of 2026: Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings (The Belgariad #1) I suppose I’m interested enough to read more of this 80s fantasy saga, but it all feels pretty generic so far, and this initial volume doesn’t build to much of a climax. The teenage hero is your typical orphan farmboy with a …
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Book #79 of 2026: Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods by Suzanne Collins (The Underland Chronicles #3) I’m definitely not in the target audience for this middle-grade fantasy series, but I liked the first volume (and of course author Suzanne Collins’s unrelated Hunger Games novels) enough that I feel compelled to finish the pentalogy …
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