Book #104 of 2025: Isles of the Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.] This is the latest “Secret Project,” a name that author Brandon Sanderson gives to the books he’s written in his spare time outside his regular public writing schedule and produced via crowdfunding instead of traditional publishing. …
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Book #103 of 2025: Nightingale’s Lament by Simon R. Green (Nightside #3) Not great, but I like it better than I did on my last read in 2019. I’ve described the Nightside books before as having rhythms similar to a police procedural TV show, and after a pilot outing and a fairly thrilling followup, this …
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Book #101 of 2025: The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard (Lays of the Hearth-Fire #1) This is currently my very favorite book, which I’ve now read three times in as many years. (I’m not necessarily committing to maintaining an annual reread, but I’m not ruling it out, either.) Like Kip scribbling additions to …
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Book #98 of 2025: A Burning in the Bones by Scott Reintgen (Waxways #3) This loose fantasy trilogy has offered diminishing returns for me as a reader, and this final volume again fails to reach the propulsive heights of its survival horror debut. Instead we have more of the generic political intrigues from the second …
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Book #92 of 2025: Agents of Light and Darkness by Simon R. Green (Nightside #2) [Note: this is a modified version of my review from 2018.] This urban fantasy series still has issues like an oversexualization of its female characters, but this second novel is better than I remembered and a vast improvement over the …
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Book #90 of 2025: The Glassblower by Victoria Goddard (The Glassblower Diptych #1) “This was another story beginning, the tale unfurling beneath her feet with every breath she took, every question on her tongue.” That line comes at 97% of the way through this slim novella in author Victoria Goddard’s sprawling Nine Worlds fantasy saga, …
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Book #81 of 2025: Something from the Nightside by Simon R. Green (Nightside #1) [Note: this is an updated version of my review from 2017.] The Nightside series was my introduction to the urban fantasy genre back in high school, and I still have a bit of a soft spot for it. This 2003 title …
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Book #79 of 2025: In the Realms of Gold by Victoria Goddard Within the context of author Victoria Goddard’s Nine Worlds fantasy saga, Ysthar is another name for Earth, and so these five stories take place in what’s seemingly a version of our own reality — albeit one that the protagonists discover is rather more …
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Book #77 of 2025: Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell One of fantasy’s most truly distinctive protagonists anchors this delightful tale, achieving a tone that’s somewhere between Hell Followed With Us and Killing Eve. Our antiheroine narrator is an inhuman creature who begins her story by describing how she ate her …
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Book #71 of 2025: The Winter Prince by Elizabeth E. Wein (The Lion Hunters #1) This 1993 novel offers a limited yet engaging retelling of the Arthurian legend, centering on the king’s illegitimate son Medraut (or Mordred, as he’s known in other versions). The primary innovation, which I don’t believe I’ve encountered elsewhere, is that …
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