Book #24 of 2026: The Water Outlaws by S. L. Huang I’m not familiar with the 14th-century Chinese novel Water Margin / Outlaws of the Marsh / All Men Are Brothers, but I’ve still really enjoyed this modern genderbent retelling, in which the central bandits are now predominantly female and/or queer. Even approached as a …
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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 #194 of 2025: The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy (Daughters of the Empty Throne #1) I’m not blown away by the generic fantasy setting or the one-dimensional villainous motivations here, but as a personal story rooted in its protagonist’s gender identity, it’s certainly a more distinctive entry in the genre. Sixteen-year-old Lorel is someone …
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Book #186 of 2025: Julie Chan Is Dead by Liann Zhang This title starts off well, as a sort of YA Yellowface meets Ripley, but it takes some decidedly odd turns and gets pretty unhinged by the end. The initial premise at least is fun — the protagonist stumbles across the body of her estranged …
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Book #122 of 2025: Stag Dance by Torrey Peters Author Torrey Peters had a smash hit with the bestselling 2021 novel Detransition, Baby, and I assume her publisher wanted to release something else with her name on it before that recognition had completely faded. Hence this new title collecting four unrelated novellas, two of which …
Book #117 of 2025: The Devil Three Times by Rickey Fayne Author Rickey Fayne’s debut novel is an ambitious and challenging text that unfortunately loses me structurally as it goes along. It’s a multigenerational tale spanning almost two centuries, which is an approach I’ve enjoyed in other works. Here, however, the handoff isn’t a clean …
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Book #115 of 2025: Kaddish.com by Nathan Englander Mixed feelings on this one, though I appreciate the #ownvoices Jewish elements. I think a condensed version of the plot could have been effective as a short story, but it’s too thin for a full-fledged novel, with the transition between the protagonist in the past and the …
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Book #106 of 2025: The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim Ji-won is a fun protagonist: a Korean-American college student who’s been dealing with some hard times lately, but who is even more obviously having a completely unhinged and over-the-top reaction to them. Or that’s obvious to the reader of her private thoughts, …
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Book #83 of 2025: Woodworking by Emily St. James I’ve been following this author’s work as a cultural critic for years, since well before she came out as transgender and changed her name to Emily St. James. That means I’ve already read several of her own personal accounts of her gender dysphoria, realization, and steps …
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Book #82 of 2025: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones Unintentionally a great companion piece to the movie Sinners (2025), another historical vampire story centered on a marginalized racial group to come out in recent months. This one is less concerned with vampirism as a metaphor for whiteness as a predatory force, but …
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