Book #68 of 2025: Till Human Voices Wake Us by Victoria Goddard Published back in 2014, this was author Victoria Goddard’s debut novel — and unfortunately, it shows. There are a few neat ideas with interesting implications for the writer’s wider Nine Worlds saga, like how the empire of Astandalas originally fell, but it’s an …
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Book #61 of 2025: Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three: The Sailor by Robin Furth, Peter David, Juanan Ramírez, and Jesus Aburtov The five issues in this bound volume unfortunately represent the end of the Marvel comic book adaptations of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series — or at least, there haven’t …
Book #59 of 2025: Tsalmoth by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #16) We’ve gone back to near the beginning of the protagonist’s timeline again, in the days when he was still a low-level Jhereg crime boss. It’s a productive visit, however — not so much for the immediate plot, which is a very typical Taltos affair, …
Book #57 of 2025: Féonie and the Islander Regalia by Victoria Goddard A lovely little companion story to author Victoria Goddard’s cozy fantasy novel The Hands of the Emperor. Near the end of that longer work, the protagonist Cliopher Mdang is honored with a ceremony requiring he dress in his finest clothing, and the servant …
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Book #49 of 2025: Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three Omnibus by Robin Furth, Peter David, Piotr Kowalski, Jonathan Marks, Nick Filardi, and Lee Loughridge Nearly but not quite the last of Marvel’s Dark Tower comic adaptations, as this volume — already smaller than the first two — for some reason …
Book #48 of 2025: Vallista by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #15) In this installment, Vlad Taltos goes full Gormenghast, and the results are somewhat underwhelming. I do appreciate how author Steven Brust continues to periodically shake up his usual storytelling rhythms for this series, and it’s hard to name a bigger change than this adventure, …
Book #47 of 2025: Ring of Solomon by Aden Polydoros (Ring of Solomon #1) [Disclaimer: I am Twitter mutuals with this author.] Overall a solid entry in the Percy Jackson genre of middle-grade fiction, where tweens battle fantastical monsters drawn from some culture’s traditional mythology (increasingly #ownvoices for the writer’s particular background, as here). In …
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Book #46 of 2025: Traditional Culture Days at Uni by Victoria Goddard This Discord-exclusive story is a lightweight snippet, depicting Kip Mdang from The Hands of the Emperor as a young person at university. It’s fun to glimpse him at that age with friends and family we’ve previously seen when they’re substantially older — namely …
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Book #41 of 2025: Starling House by Alix E. Harrow An atmospheric modern gothic / romantasy, in which a feisty heroine from the wrong side of the tracks is drawn to the creepy haunted house in her community and its reclusive and volatile caretaker. My favorite part of this story is its rural Kentucky setting, …
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Book #40 of 2025: Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura This is an odd little story. It’s a translated version of a Japanese bestseller, and I’m sure there are some cultural nuances that I’m missing, as I’ve had a particularly hard time swallowing the basic premise here. Not the mirror that magically transports …
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