Book #3 of 2026: Two Twisted Crowns by Rachel Gillig (The Shepherd King #2) I liked the first volume of this fantasy series enough to pick up this sequel, and I do think it concludes the overarching story reasonably well. Unfortunately it does this in sort of a weird way, jettisoning the parts I enjoyed …
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Book #2 of 2026: World Tales edited by G. Randal Rau The 1985 World Fantasy Convention, held that year in Tucson, AZ with a theme of “Writers of the Southwest,” produced this souvenir book to resemble an issue of the old pulp magazine Weird Tales. (Seriously, look it up; designer Donald D. Markstein did an …
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Book #1 of 2026: Star Wars: Master of Evil by Adam Christopher This is a solid but basically unspectacular Star Wars novel, unfortunately saddled with a misleading title, publisher’s summary, and cover art. It’s only a Darth Vader story in that he’s around for a lot of the plot, but he gets just a handful …
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Book #203 of 2025: Ripley Under Water by Patricia Highsmith (The Ripliad #5) Author Patricia Highsmith’s final novel about the amoral Tom Ripley is unfortunately also her weakest. The only thing driving the plot this time is that a new couple has moved into town, seemingly with the express purpose of tormenting the antihero whom …
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Book #202 of 2025: The Bride Wore Black Leather by Simon R. Green (Nightside #12) And so the Nightside series comes to an end, more or less. (There’s still a collection of short stories in the setting, which I’ll be rereading next, and a few crossovers with some of author Simon R. Green’s other works …
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Book #201 of 2025: Superboy: A Celebration of 75 Years by various This 2020 anthology commemorates three-quarters of a century of the titular junior superhero via a selection of comic book issues from across that span. In fact, it turns out that four different Kryptonians have each worn the mantle of Superboy at one point …
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Book #200 of 2025: A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo (The Singing Hills Cycle #6) Another short but immersive tale of Cleric Chih on their wanderings around this East Asian-inspired fantasy land, recording local stories and trying to sift fact from legend. As usual it’s a fairly standalone adventure that doesn’t rely on readers …
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Book #198 of 2025: The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia An excellent horror novel that unfolds across three quasi-related timelines. Primarily we’re following a graduate student in 1998 as she pursues research on her thesis topic, which concerns a lesser-known (fictional) female contemporary of H. P. Lovecraft. She’s investigating a rumor that one of the author’s …
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Book #196 of 2025: Doctor Who: Transit by Ben Aaronovitch (Virgin New Adventures #10) This cyberpunk / cosmic horror mashup is big on worldbuilding texture but light on plot and character work. The worst thing about it, though, stems from its place in the Doctor Who Virgin New Adventures series, as the first installment with …
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Book #195 of 2025: Tailored Realities by Brandon Sanderson [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.] This is Brandon Sanderson’s second collection of short fiction, following Arcanum Unbounded in 2016. That earlier volume collected all the writer’s smaller works in his expansive Cosmere setting, while this one contains the opposite: ten tales expressly not …
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