Book #169 of 2025: Just Another Judgement Day by Simon R. Green (Nightside #9) This urban fantasy sequence has been in a bit of a holding pattern since the end of the Lilith arc in volume six (half a series ago now), and this next installment doesn’t do much to change that. Suzie and John …
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Book #165 of 2025: King Sorrow by Joe Hill A beast of a novel that fully earns its epic scope, proving once and for all that author Joe Hill has escaped from his father Stephen King‘s shadow but will always be indebted to him for the shared family style (as well as a few charming …
Book #162 of 2025: Angel Down by Daniel Kraus A harrowingly propulsive rush through the trenches of World War I, full of sickening visceral images of war in service to a bizarre speculative twist: the presence on the battlefield of a literal angel screaming in agony, whom our protagonist, unaware of her identity, has been …
Book #161 of 2025: One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig (The Shepherd King #1) I’m digging the sinister vibes here, along with the general premise of a heroine with the voice of an ancient monster secretly living in her head, a la Vespertine or Venom. Even better is the fact that, although this is a …
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Book #158 of 2025: The Unnatural Inquirer by Simon R. Green (Nightside #8) One of the blander adventures in this urban fantasy series, further hampered by a streak of sexism and unaddressed poor behavior from the protagonist. And look, I get that John Taylor is something of an antihero — the whole crux of this …
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Book #153 of 2025: Katabasis by R. F. Kuang This fantasy novel does a great job capturing the terrifyingly mundane lows of graduate school: the uncertainty, the depression, the stress, the disordered sleep and eating habits, the precarious financial situation, the emotionally abusive professors, and so on. My own experience wasn’t ever so bad that …
Book #147 of 2025: Hell to Pay by Simon R. Green (Nightside #7) The initial story arc of this series came to an effective crescendo in the previous volume, so it’s only fitting that this next installment feels like a bit of a breather by comparison. It’s a back-to-basics sort of plot that returns the …
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Book #145 of 2025: Olive and the Dragon by Victoria Goddard Author Victoria Goddard’s latest Nine Worlds title offers her usual brand of wholesome cozy fantasy, fleshing out a new corner of that ever-expanding saga. This time it’s a prequel to her Greenwing & Dart series, which normally centers around a young gentleman scholar named …
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Book #144 of 2025: Curious Tides by Pascale Lacelle (Drowned Gods #1) I like the worldbuilding and the initial premise of this fantasy novel, in which a student is returning to her magical school for the new semester after her best friend and several classmates tragically died. (It turns out they were pursuing some sort …
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Book #140 of 2025: The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (Eternal Path Trilogy #1) A seriously strong fantasy debut. I thought while reading this novel that I might wind up giving it my top rating of five-out-of-five stars, and though it falls short of that in the end, I’ve still really enjoyed the piece and …
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