A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

The Wild Shore, by Kim Stanley Robinson

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 18:09:22 GMT

This was Robinson's first novel, one of a set of three set in future Orange County, Californias, exploring three different futures for America. The second one is about a future much like the present day, hyper-capitalist and dystopian. The third is set in an ecotopia which apparently involves lots of softball. (I've only read The Wild Shore, and gleaned this information from reviews of the others.) After reading The Ministry of the Future, I thought I'd give Robinson another try, and this book sounded most relevant to my personal interests. (I've attempted Years of Rice and Salt multiple times and never gotten very far in. It sounds so interesting!)

The Wild Shore is set about sixty years after the US was shattered by multiple neutron bombs, then quarantined by the rest of the world. It's now a bunch of extremely small, struggling towns which are kept separated from each other as the rest of the world uses satellite imagery to bomb them any time they attempt to do something like build railroad tracks. The California coast is patrolled by Japanese vessels who prevent them from sailing too far out. No one in the book has any idea who bombed the US or why, but given the quarantine I assume the US started the war and someone else finished it.

The book is narrated by Henry, who is 17 and lives in a village of 60. He hangs out with a bunch of mostly-indistinguishable other teenage boys. (I spent three-quarters of the book thinking Steve and Nicolin were two different boys. They are not. I wish writers wouldn't randomly call characters by their first or last name.) They fish and farm and trade with scavengers. Henry is the prize student of Tom, one of four elders who recall the pre-catastrophe days. It is immediately obvious that Tom's teachings are a mix of real and complete bullshit, but as the younger generation has no context or means of fact-checking, they tend to think it's either all true or all bullshit.

The village gets contacted by the remnants of San Diego, which wants to build a rail line and fight back against the quarantine. Henry gets sucked into this, with disastrous results.

This book is SLOW. I often like books that are mostly about daily life, but Henry's daily life was not that interesting - he spends a lot of time hanging out with boys and talking and thinking about girls and daddy issues, and you can get that in any contemporary novel about teenage boys. The only real character is Tom - everyone else is lightly sketched in at best. Girls and women are only present as girlfriends, potential girlfriends, and moms. (There's one girl who's the leader of the farmers, who are mostly women - the men are mostly fishers - but she doesn't get much to do.) The book was just barely interesting enough that I finished it, but it didn't end anywhere more interesting than the rest of it.

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Content note: Characters use racial slurs for Japanese people.

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A Wizard of Earthsea graphic novel, by Ursula Le Guin, adapted & illustrated by Fred Fordham

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 19:53:45 GMT

An incredibly beautiful book and a very faithful adaptation. Much of the language is word-for-word from the book. I would happily hang most panels on my wall.

A number of sequences are completely wordless, and while very beautiful I don't think I would have understood what was going on in all of them if I hadn't already read the book. There's also a lot of panels which are extremely dark, so much so that it's hard to tell what's happening. Most of these are indoors. I know there's no electricity but in most of these there is magelight!

Also, the otak is the size of a mouse and looks very much like a mouse. That is too small - in the book it catches a mouse and brings it to Ged, and other people tease Ged that it's a rat or a dog. I pictured it the size of a kitten or squirrel, and looking somewhat like a stockier weasel, or a small wolverine or marten. Definitely not a mouse!

It's always interesting to see other people's visualizations of books. The dragon of Pendor is seen mostly through a thick fog, all glowing eyes and fiery breath and insinuation. The flying creatures that pursue Ged and Serret from the Court of the Terrenon are not monstrous pterodactyls, as I always imagined them, but hideous living gargoyles.

I highly recommend this to anyone who's already read the novel, but I don't suggest reading it instead of or before the novel.

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Doors of Sleep, by Tim Pratt

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 20:49:49 GMT

This is the first book I've read by Tim Pratt. I had somehow gotten the impression that they wrote very highbrow, abstract sf that I probably wouldn't enjoy. I have no idea where that came from because this novel, which I tried because of the delightful premise, is completely not that and I enjoyed it very much.

Zax Delatree, a social worker/mediator from a utopian post-scarcity world, develops a condition where he travels to a random other world every time he sleeps. Through a lot of trial and error, he also discovers that he can take with him items on his person, and also other people if he's touching them when he falls asleep. If they're asleep too, they will arrive fine. If they're not, they arrive insane. ("The Jaunt" is one of many spottable influences.) Here's Zax and his companion, Minna, explaining their situation:

"Do you know the word 'multiverse?' [...] We're travelers, sort of. Sort of explorers. And sort of refugees."

"If this is true, the implications are immense."

"The implications are also very small and also personal," said Minna.

This is the most charming and heartfelt novel I've read in a while. It's mostly a picaresque, with Zax and Minna (and assorted friends and pursuing enemies) visiting all sorts of colorful other worlds, exploring and surviving and trying to be of use. The many worlds are great, I loved Zax and Minna and the friends they meet, and it's full of sense of wonder and hopefulness and people being kind under extremely difficult circumstances. I also liked that Zax and Minna are friends who are explicitly not romantically or sexually involved with each other.

There is a sequel, Prison of Sleep, which I have ordered.

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The Language of Liars, by S. L. Huang

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 17:33:57 GMT

A science fiction novella about aliens, communication, and certain dark topics which are spoilery to mention. Though if you read the blurb for this book, it very strongly implies those topics and the specific shocking twist that involves them. It reminded me of China Mieville's Embassytown, though the latter benefited from its longer length.

Ro's species, along with some others, can jump into the minds of Star Eaters, the mysterious species that alone can mine the mineral that enables space travel. Ro is told that doing so is the only way to study them, and while jumping into their bodies extinguishes their minds, they are extremely long-lived beings and their minds definitely come back, so Ro is only doing the equivalent of causing a day-long blackout. The Star Eaters were apparently once enslaved, but now work voluntarily; communication with them is difficult and puzzling. Once you jump in, you're stuck for the rest of your life, but Ro is such a curious and skilled linguist that he's willing to give up everything to understand this oddly mysterious race. (I guess the possessing being's mind is supposed to only live for its species's normal lifespan? This is not explained.)

If you've read much science fiction, or many books in general, you have probably already figured out what's really going on. In fact it's so obvious that it seems strange that it takes the characters so long to do so, but of course no one knows exactly what story they're in.

Everything involving alien communication is great. But the plot is so predictable and grim that I didn't enjoy the book much.

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Authority, by Jeff Vandermeer

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 17:14:27 GMT

This sequel to Annihilation takes an unusual approach. Rather than returning to Area X, almost the entire book takes place outside of it, focusing on the scientific/government agency, the Southern Reach, which has been sending expeditions into it.

Most of the book is bureaucratic shenanigans with creeping horror undertones. The main character, unsubtly nicknamed Control, is slowly losing his mind trying to figure out what the hell happened to his predecessor and why she kept a live plant feeding off a dead mouse in her desk drawer, what is up with the bizarre incantatory literal writings on the wall, and what's up with the biologist, who has seemingly returned from Area X but says she's not the biologist and asks to be called Ghost Bird. There's parts that are interesting but also a lot of office satire which is not really what I was looking for in this series.

About 80% in, the book took a turn that got me suddenly very interested.

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I kind of want to know what happens next but I'm not sure Vandermeer is interested in giving readers what they want.

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The Measure, by Nikki Erlick

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 17:06:30 GMT

One day every adult on Earth gets a box that contains a string that measures out the length of their life.

This premise seems designed in a lab to create a book to be read for book clubs, where everyone gets to discuss whether or not they'd open their box and how they'd react to a long or short string. It worked, too. And it is absolutely about the premise. Unfortunately, the book is bad: flat, dull, sappy, American in the worst possible way, and emotionally manipulative.

It follows multiple characters, all American, most New Yorkers, and all middle or upper class. Some get long strings. Some get short strings. The ones with short strings agonize over their short strings. The ones with long strings who are in relationships with people with short strings agonize over that.

One of them is black, a fact mentioned exactly once in the entire book, and one has a Hispanic name. One set is an old right-wing politician and his wife. But all of them have identical-sounding narrative voices. Other than the Hispanic-named dude, who is mostly concerned about job discrimination, and the politician, who just wants to exploit the issue, everyone is worried about having a relationship and children with someone who will die young/worried that they'll get dumped and not be able to have children because they'll die young.

Ultimately, isn't everything really about baaaaaabies? Shouldn't everyone have baaaaaaabies no matter what?

The book is so bland and flat. The strings are a metaphor for discrimination, as short stringers are discriminated against. It explores some other social issues, all extremely American like health insurance discrimination and mass shootings, but only peeks outside America for brief and stereotypical moments: North Korea mandates not opening the boxes, China mandates opening them, and in Italy hardly anyone opens their box because they already know what really matters: family. BARF FOREVER.

It was obvious going in that the origin of the boxes would never be explained, but no one even seemed curious about that. Once all adults have received them, they appear on your doorstep the night you turn 22. Video of this is fuzzy. No one parks themselves on the doorstep to see if they teleport in or what. No one has a paradigm-upending crisis over this absolute proof of God/aliens/time travel/magic/etc that the boxes represent. No one comes up with inventive ways to take advantage of the situation a la Death Note. No one is concerned that this proves predestination. No one wonders why they appeared now and what the motive of whoever put them there is.

The point that life is precious regardless of length is hammered in with a thousand sledgehammers, to the point where it felt like a bad self-help book in the form of a novel. The romances are flat and sappy. In the truly vomitous climax, someone pedals around on a bicycle with the stereo playing "Que Sera Sera" and it quotes the entire song.

It's only April but this will be hard to top as the worst book I read all year.

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Nekropolis, by Maureen McHugh

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 17:49:04 GMT

In a future Morocco, a young woman named Hariba with no prospects has herself jessed, a process which renders her loyal to whoever buys her, and sells herself as an indentured servant to a wealthy household. There she meets Akhmim, a harni - a genetically engineered human designed to be a perfect lover or companion. Hariba falls in love with him and runs away with him, but because she's jessed, she becomes extremely sick due to defying her loyalty implant.

Up until this point, the book had a compelling atmosphere a bit reminiscent of The Handmaid's Tale in that it explored the daily life of people living with very little agency in the home of someone who owns them. But once Hariba gets sick, she becomes completely sidelined from the story and basically lies in bed suffering for the entire middle part of the book, while the POV switches from Hariba and Akhmim to first her mother, then her friend - neither of whom are very interesting.

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This is a well-written book with interesting issues that sags a lot in the middle portion when Hariba basically drops out of the story, and ends in a note of depression and gloom.

Though I didn't love this book, I'm sorry that McHugh doesn't seem to be writing novels anymore as I did quite like China Mountain Zhang and Mission Child.

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Dreadnought, by April Daniels

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 18:02:30 GMT

Danny is a 15-year-old closeted trans girl in a world where superheroes are real. She's across town from her home and her transphobic abusive father, hiding in an alley and painting her toenails with polish bought in a shop as far from her home as she can manage, when America's strongest superhero, Dreadnought, gets in a fight with a supervillain, crashes at her feet, and passes on his powers to her, since she's the only one there to receive them, before dying.

His powers automatically reshape her body into her mental ideal. So now she's physically a very pretty, very strong girl with superpowers... who now has to explain this to her abusive transphobic parents, everyone at her school, and the local superheroes, one of whom is a TERF. Not to mention that the supervillain who killed Dreadnought is still out there...

This is basically exactly what it sounds like: a superhero origin story for persecuted trans teenagers. It's very earnest and has absolutely no subtext. My favorite parts were the bits where Danny gets her gender affirmed by new friends and a sympathetic superhero, which are genuinely very sweet, and when Danny finally proclaims herself the new Dreadnought, which is a great stand up and cheer moment . But overall, I'm too old to be its ideal reader.

Content notes: A LOT of transphobia and transphobic slurs.

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Book Cull Reviews

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 20:30:27 GMT

As you may have guessed, I completely failed to live up to my goal of reviewing everything I read, even in brief. Rather than attempting to catch up to my backlog, I am re-starting from where I am.

Yesterday I did a quick book cull by pulling books off my shelves that have been sitting there for ages, reading the first couple chapters, and deciding if I was likely to continue. I focused on books I'd started before and not gotten very far into. Here are the books that landed in the "move to Paper & Clay's used section" bag.

Trouble and Her Friends, by Melissa Scott

See the new cover? If you've been wanting to read this, it's now available as an ebook!

This is a classic lesbian cyberpunk novel that I have tried to read at least three times, and never managed to get very far into. I kept putting it back on the shelf because it's a classic and probably objectively good, but I'm just not that into cyberpunk. If a lot of the action is taking place online, I tend to lose interest. Also, some books just don't grab me, due to a mismatch between me and the book, rather than being objectively or even subjectively bad. This is clearly one of them. Someone else can be thrilled to find it at Paper & Clay, take it home, and enjoy it.

The Splinter in the Sky, by Kemi Ashling-Garcia

A tea specialist becomes a spy in a far-future colonized world! Unfortunately, this starts with a prologue which reads much like the infamous "trade war" crawl at the top of The Phantom Menace. Yes, I know that turned out to be prescient, but the problem was that it was written in a stultifying manner. The next couple chapters were much more lively, but also had a tendency to clunky exposition - some of which was pretty cool, to be fair. This was the second time I attempted this book, and had essentially the same reaction I did to Trouble and Her Friends - not bad, but not for me.

Furies of Calderon, by Jim Butcher

This has been described to me as "Pokemon in alternate ancient Rome," which sounds amazing. For at least the third time, it failed to grab me. I got about four chapters in and there's still no Pokemon. Someone else will like it more than me.

The Hum and the Shiver, by Alex Bledsoe

A race of people called the Tufa have lived amongst normal humans in Appalachia since the beginning of time. They can see ghosts, have music-based magic, etc. This opens with a Tufa woman very very clearly based on Jessica Lynch, who was a real-life American soldier who was wounded and captured in the US/Iraq war, returning from Iraq. I found this in poor taste. The general style also got on my nerves.

While doing this, I got sufficiently grabbed by the openings to keep reading and finish Maureen McHugh's Nekropolis, which hopefully I will actually review. I also returned Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies and Tanya Huff's Sing the Four Quarters to the shelf.

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Yesteryear, by Caro Claire Burke

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 18:46:34 GMT

Natalie is a wildly successful trad wife influencer. She and her husband Caleb have a farm and six adorable children, and Natalie has parlayed carefully edited clips of her perfect life into a lucrative career. (She leaves out the two nannies, 30 farm hands, and the fact that Sassafras the cow is actually four sequential cows, replaced every time one dies, like goldfish.)

Then Natalie suffers a mysterious fall from grace. And then she finds herself in what appears to be an alternate version of her own life in the 1800s, with a husband very similar but not quite identical to her original husband, and children who claim to be her own. Has she time traveled? Is she delusional? Has she gotten kidnapped into a non-consensual reality show?

This is an extremely interesting novel that makes a good companion to Saratoga Schrader's Trad Wife. The beginning of the book is extremely similar, though Natalie is much more successful than Camille. Burke's version of a trad wife influencer deluding herself and lying to her followers about her supposedly perfect life is much better-written than Schrader's. But that's a double-edged sword, because it makes Natalie much more unlikable. She's an incredibly hatable character and the book is from her POV, and that makes a lot of the book not really enjoyable to read.

But the book turns out to be much more ambitious and clever than it seems at the beginning. When I finished it, I was glad I'd read it and appreciated it a lot. That being said, I enjoyed Trad Wife more on an emotional level.

I highly recommend not clicking on the cut unless you're 100% positive you'll never read the book. I really enjoyed the non-spoiled experience.

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Content notes: Domestic violence, rape (on-page, graphic), child abuse and neglect, farm animal neglect/poor caretaking (just mentioned), gaslighting, non-consensual drugging, current American right-wing stuff.

While attempting to buy Saratoga Schaefer's Trad Wife, I accidentally bought a different novel called Trad Wife by Michelle Brandon. And Sarah Langan is coming out with yet another book called Trad Wife in September. I am now on a mission to read all four trad wife books, to compare and contrast.

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Seconds to Spare, by Rachel Reiss

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 19:53:03 GMT

18-year-old Evelyn is on a plane, transporting her father's ashes, when there's an announcement of turbulence. A passenger gets up from her seat, then collapses in the aisle. The plane begins to nosedive, and everything goes white. Then Evelyn is back on the plane, which is no longer nosediving. There's an announcement of turbulence. A passenger gets up from her seat, then collapses in the aisle. The plane begins to nosedive...

Evelyn quickly realizes that she's in a 29-minute time loop. She tries to figure out why the plane is crashing and how to stop it, but gets absolutely nowhere. She talks to other passengers. She steals their food and eats it. She watches every movie on the plane. She learns everything about everyone, except the handsome sleeping teenage boy who never wakes up during the loop. She goes through 400 loops and almost loses her mind. And then, on one loop, the boy wakes up. And on the next loop, he also realizes that he's in a loop...

Like the last novel I read by Reiss (Out of Air, the one with the teenage scuba divers), this book has a great premise. I enjoyed how Evelyn makes herself free with everything on the plane while trapped, and I also enjoyed how she and Rion, the sleeping boy, work together once he wakes up to figure out what's going on. However, it had an issue that more-or-less ruined the book for me. Rion suggests something that somehow Evelyn failed to try in 400 loops, which is to follow one person on the plane at a time, and observe everything they do. It never occurred to Evelyn to watch the flight attendants, and watching one of them reveals exactly what's causing the crash. They try to prevent it in several ways that don't work. Then Rion figures out a clever plan that saves the plane and fixes the loop.

The author clearly wanted to have Evelyn be alone in the loop for a long time. I can see why she wanted that - we get a vivid sense of her frustration and despair - but it makes Evelyn seem useless when she spends ages watching movies and so forth, and then Rion figures everything out almost immediately. This is exacerbated when Rion also comes up with the plan to fix things. This wouldn't have been a problem if they'd been in the loop together much earlier - then they could have bonded while investigating, taken breaks and done the fun stuff that she did alone, and mutually figured stuff out. It would have been more fun to read and felt less sexist, which I'm sure was unintentional but is inevitable when the girl fails at everything for ages, then a boy shows up and both solves the mystery and fixes the problem.

I'll be interested to see if Reiss's third book also has a three word title that rhymes with "care."

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Baked Beans for Breakfast AKA The Secret Summer, by Ruth Chew

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 16:22:12 GMT

Click on my Ruth Chew tag to see what sort of books she's known for: small-scale children's fantasies focusing on magic-infused everyday objects and creatures in Brooklyn. This is her hard-to-find first book, which is not a fantasy.

The main characters are a brother and sister who were left, along with their never-seen younger brother and sister, in the care of their grandmother who feeds them canned tomatoes - yuck! They leave a note saying they're doing a long sleepover at a friend's house, then run away to the site where they often went camping, buy a cheap boat, and live on an island.

This is entertaining enough on its own, but mostly of interest because it shows how she course-corrected in her fantasy books: the flaws in this book are corrected, and she melds its strengths (likable kid characters, a focus on the practicalities and small details of both the human and natural worlds, a friendly old woman) with excellent small-scale magic. In all the rest of her books, there are just two kids - no unnecessary and off-page younger siblings. There are no mean kids or bullying (this book has two mean bullies who just drop out of the story). The parents are around but the kids' adventures take place out of sight, so there's no implausible runaway plots. And the old ladies are witches, which makes them even better!

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Trad Wife, by Saratoga Schaefer

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 18:01:39 GMT

Camille is a tradwife influencer, living in near-total isolation from all humans but her awful and mostly absent husband Graham and her nosy neighbor Renee. She directs her own life like it's a perfect Instagram post, constantly obsessing over the perfect shade of beige and how her followers will react if she disagrees with a more successful tradwife influencer's insistence on a folic acid-free diet. The best way to get followers is to get pregnant, and she and Graham haven't managed that yet. But there's something lurking in the dark, deep well near the dark, deep woods that might be able to solve that problem for her.

The first quarter or so of this book is so repetitive and anvillicious that I might have DNF'd it if I hadn't been reading it for the horror book club. However, it picks up once Camille has sex with the creature in the well. (Camille tells herself it's an angel but can't stop calling it "the creature;" its actual nature is pleasingly ambiguous.) Her extremely weird pregnancy and increasingly desperate efforts to conceal its weirdnesses from Graham, Renee, and her online followers had me glued to the pages, and once her baby is born, I went from being entertained to actively loving the story. I don't want to give away too much about the baby, but I think it's the first time I have ever gotten deeply attached to a fictional baby. Of course, it helps that the baby isn't quite human...

The story is predictable but in a good way once you're past the interminable first quarter; you can't wait for certain things to happen. It gets increasingly batshit and darkly, gleefully funny as it goes along. It's a good female rage book, and has some quality monsterfucking scenes. Despite the rough start I really enjoyed this.

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Content notes: Very gory.

Incidentally, there are at least three novels called Trad Wife or Tradwife released this year. One by Sarah Langan is coming out in September.

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Where Wolves Don't Die, by Anton Treuer

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 22:02:52 GMT

Ezra, an Ojibwe teenager, has to flee Minneapolis when the home of the racist teenager who bullied him burns down, and he becomes the prime suspect. He goes to Canada to run traplines with his grandfather.

Where Wolves Don't Die is mostly a coming of age story; the thriller/mystery element is present but minor. It was recommended to me "Like an Ojibwe Hatchet," which definitely captures a lot of the vibe though it's about learning in community and family rather than isolation. Ezra goes from boy to man while he learns the old ways with his grandfather, who he loves. It's engrossing and moving. I liked that Ezra actively wants to stay with and learn from his grandfather rather than resisting it and having to come around.

Content notes: Hunting and trapping is central to the story.

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Address Unknown, by Kathrine Kressman Taylor

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 20:33:24 GMT

An epistolatory novel about the friendship between an American Jew, Max, and a German, Martin. As Hitler rises to power, their relationship sours, in some expected ways and some less expected, as their characters are revealed.

Very short, very powerful, very technically skilled, a quick easy read with an unexpected and unforgettable outcome. Seriously, don't click on spoilers if there's any chance you'll read the book. That being said, I read it because Naomi Kritzer told me the whole story and it was still great. Thanks for the rec!

The book was published in 1939 under a male-sounding pseudonym, but the style feels almost modern and the themes feel incredibly modern. There's an afterword about what inspired the book, which which is worth reading. Taylor had some German friends who seemed like kind, wonderful people, who became fervent Nazis and abandoned their Jewish friends. In a question so many of us are asking now, she wondered, What changed their hearts so? What steps brought them to such cruelty?

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My Darling Dreadful Thing, by Johanna van Veen

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 21:03:10 GMT

This spooky ghost story has a central pairing that I feel like I may have requested as an original work: Widow/Female Fake Psychic/Ghost of a Female Bog Body.

My Darling Dreadful Thing is set in the Netherlands in the 1950s, which is a selling point all by itself as I love unusual settings. Roos is a young woman whose abusive fake psychic mother forces her to participate in her fake seances. But though Roos does not communicate with the spirits sought by the desperate, grieving customers, she actually does have a spirit companion, a bog body whom Roos has bound to her and named Ruth.

Roos is delighted when Agnes, a biracial (Indonesian/Dutch) widow, takes her as a companion and spirits her away to her neglected Gothic mansion in the middle of nowhere. The mansion is otherwise occupied only by Agnes's sister-in-law, Willamine, who is dying of tuberculosis, and has a marvellously bizarre Gothic history. Roos falls hard in love with Agnes, with whom she has a surprising amount in common.

But this whole story is being told in retrospect, as a series of interviews Roos is having with a psychiatrist who is trying to determine whether she's mentally fit to stand trial for murder. Something very bad happened at the mansion...

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Very enjoyable, very gothic, very atmospheric. I'm excited to read van Veen's other two books. I looked her up to see if she's actually from the Netherlands (yes) and learned that she's one of a set of non-identical triplet sisters! I don't think I've ever read a book by a triplet before.

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Landslide, by Veronique Day

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 20:01:52 GMT

A French children's book in translation from 1961, in which five children are trapped in a cottage by a landslide.

14-year-old Laurent's family is concerned that he spends all his time reading and doing chemistry experiments, and isn't engaging with other people. So they dispatch him to stay with his younger brother and sister in a cottage only occupied by a 14-year-old girl and her younger brother, who are alone because her mother is having surgery. The idea is that Laurent will have to take care of the other kids, and this will make him come out of his shell more. His parents do leave him the out of being able to pack up his siblings and return to Paris if he really hates it.

I am honestly not sure if it was even vaguely normal in 60s France for five kids ages 14-5 to stay alone in a remote mountain cottage for ten days, or if this was just a literary convention. Anyway, Laurent unsurprisingly hates it and packs up his siblings to leave. But while they're on the train platform with the other kids, he has a change of heart and they all head back to the cottage. But they stop in the cottage of a family friend, who is out at the time.

It gets buried in a landslide! They're all trapped in pitch darkness! In an only vaguely familiar house! They can't use the stove because it already nearly suffocated them with carbon monoxide! Their only air is from a narrow shaft leading to a giant canyon! There's very little food! No one knows they're in trouble because one of the kids wrote ten postcards dated for every day of the vacation, then arranged with the post office to send one per day!

The kids having to do everything in total darkness for most of the book is a really cool twist on this sort of "trapped in a space" book. (One of my favorite moments is when enough dirt slides away that some light gets in, and they see that they've been half-starved in pitch darkness with two huge hams and a lantern hanging from the ceiling.) It has some cozy elements - they're trapped with goats, which they can milk but which also get into everything and poop everywhere, and one goat gives birth to twin kids - but gets desperate quickly when Laurent gets an infected cut and the main milking goat drowns in a flooded cellar. But it all ends up okay when they first signal with Morse code in a mirror (in a nice touch of realism, it takes a long time for anyone to figure out the message as the kids get some of the letters wrong, including signaling OSO instead of SOS) and then make and set off gunpowder!

Not an enduring classic, but an entertaining read.

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The Luminous Dead, by Caitlin Starling

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 22:54:06 GMT

Gyre explores the tunnels of an alien world in a mechanical suit, her only connection to the outside world the voice of Em, her handler who she’s never met, who may or may not have her welfare in mind, and who definitely has boundary issues.

Gyre has less experience caving than she claimed, and caving is extremely difficult. There are sandworm-like creatures called Tunnelers that will kill multiple parties of cavers for unknown reasons, so cavers go in alone, unable to take off their suit for weeks on end, with their handler as their only link with the outside world. Em can literally take control of Gyre’s suit/body, can inject her with drugs, etc - and not only has little compunction about doing so, but won't tell Gyre what the actual purpose of the mission is.

Spoilers! ( Read more... )

This is a type of story I don’t see very often, in which there’s one main science fiction element – in this case, the mechanical caving suit – which is explored in depth and is essential to the story, and it’s also set on a (very lightly sketched-in) other planet. Generally the “one science fiction element” stories are set on Earth. Apart from the Tunnelers, this novel actually could take place on an Earth where the suit exists.

The Luminous Dead, like The Starving Saints, has a small cast of sapphic women and takes place almost entirely in the same claustrophobic space; if it was on TV, we’d call it a bottle episode. I normally like that sort of thing but unlike The Starving Saints, it outstays its welcome. It has about a novella’s worth of story, and while it’s very atmospheric and any given portion is well-written and interesting, considered alone, as a whole it’s very repetitive and over-long. I would mostly recommend it if you like complicated lesbians with bad boundaries.

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The Starving Saints, by Caitlin Starling

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 18:54:40 GMT

Excellent dark fantasy about three women trapped in a medieval castle under siege. It reminded me a bit of Tanith Lee - it's very lush and decadent in parts - and a bit of The Everlasting. Fantastic female characters with really interesting relationships. The language is not strictly medieval-accurate but a lot of the characters' mindsets are, which is fun.

All I knew going in was that it was medieval, female-centric, and involved cannibalism. This gave me a completely wrong impression, which was that it was a sort of female-centric medieval Lord of the Flies in which everyone turns on each other under pressure and starts killing and eating each other. This is very nearly the opposite of what it's actually about, though there is some survival-oriented eating of the already-dead.

The three main characters are Phosyne, an ex-nun and mad alchemist with some very unusual pets that even she has no idea what they are; Ser Voyne, a female knight whose rigid loyalty gets tested to hell and back; and Treila, a noblewoman fallen on hard times and desperate to escape. The three of them have deliciously complicated relationships with each other, fully of shifting boundaries, loyalties, trust, sexuality, and love.

At the start, everyone is absolutely desperate. They've been trapped in the castle under siege for six months, the last food will run out in two weeks, and help does not seem to be on the way. Treila is catching rats and plotting her escape via a secret tunnel, but some mysterious connection to Ser Voyne is keeping her from making a break for it. Phosyne has previously enacted a "miracle" to purify the water, and the king is pressuring her to miraculously produce food; unfortunately, she has no idea how she did the first miracle, let alone how to conjure food out of nothing. Ser Voyne, who wants to charge out and fight, has been assigned to stand over Phosyne and make her do a miracle.

And then everything changes.

The setting is a somewhat alternate medieval Europe; it's hard to tell exactly how alternate because we're very tightly in the POV of the three main characters, and we only know what they're directly observing or thinking about. The religion we see focuses on the Constant Lady and her saints. She might be some version of the Virgin Mary, but though the language around her is Christian-derived, there doesn't seem to be a Jesus analogue. The nuns (no priests are ever mentioned) keep bees and give a kind of Communion with honey. Some of them are alchemists and engineers. There is a female knight who is treated differently than the male knights by the king and there's only one of her, but it's not clear whether this is specific to their relationship or whether women are usually not allowed to be knights or whether they are allowed but it's unusual.

This level of uncertainty about the background doesn't feel like the author didn't bother to think it out, but rather adds to the overall themes of the book, which heavily focus on how different people experience/perceive things differently. It also adds to the claustrophobic feeling: everyone is trapped in a very small space and additionally limited by what they can perceive. The magic in the book does have some level of rules, but is generally not well understood or beyond human comprehension. There's a pervasive sense of living in a world that isn't or cannot be understood, but which can only be survived by achieving some level of comprehension.

And that's all you should know before you start. The actual premise doesn't happen until about a fourth of the way into the book, and while it's spoiled in all descriptions I didn't know it and really enjoyed finding out.

Spoilers for the premise. ( Read more... )

Spoilers for later in the book: ( Read more... )

Probably the last third could have been trimmed a bit, but overall this book is fantastic. I was impressed enough that I bought all of Starling's other books for my shop. I previously only had The Luminous Dead, which I'm reading now.

Content notes: Cannibalism. Physical injury/mutilation. Mind control. A dubcon kiss. Extremely vivid descriptions of the physical sensations of hunger and starvation. Phosyne's pets do NOT die!

Feel free to put spoilers for the whole book in comments.

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The Staircase in the Woods, by Chuck Wendig

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 20:41:29 GMT

Five high school friends go on a camping trip and find a mysterious staircase in the woods. One of them climbs it and vanishes. Twenty years later, the staircase reappears, and they go to face it again.

I loved this premise and the cover. The staircase leading nowhere is spooky and beautiful, a weird melding of nature and civilization, so I was hoping for something that matched that vibe, like Annihilation or Revelator.

That was absolutely not what I got. The Staicase in the Woods is the misbegotten mutant child of It, King Sorrow, and Tumblr-speak. Every single character is insufferable. The teenagers are boring, and the adults are all the worst people you meet at parties. There are four men and one woman/nonbinary person, and she/they reads exactly like what MAGA thinks liberal women/trans people are like -- AuHD, blue hair, Tumblr-speak, angry, preachy, kinky sex etc. She/they says "My pronouns are she/them," then is only ever referred to as she and a woman. The staircase itself is barely in the story, where it leads is a letdown, and the ending combines the worst elements of being dumb and unresolved.

I got partway in and then skimmed because I was curious about the staircase and the vanished kid.

Angry spoilers for the whole book.

( Read more... )

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The Brightness Between Us, by Eliot Schrefer

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 19:04:06 GMT

The sequel to The Darkness Outside of Us. I enjoyed it! It's both interestingly different from the first book and is satisfying on the level of "I want more of this," which is exactly what one wants from a sequel.

Literally everything about this book is massively spoilery for the first one, including its premise. I'll do two sets of spoiler cuts, one for the premise and one for the whole book.

( Premise spoilers )

Stop reading here if you don't want to be spoiled for the entire book.

( Entire book spoilers )

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The Darkness Outside Us, by Eliot Schrefer

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 17:48:53 GMT

A teenage boy, Ambrose, wakes up on a spaceship with no memory of how he got there. OS, the AI programmed with his mother's voice, reminds him that he's on a mission to rescue his sister, who went to Titan two years ago and sent out a distress call. And also, he has a surprise companion on a journey he thought would be solo: Kodiak, a teenage boy from the rival nation, who is ensconced in his own quarters and refuses to come out.

Ambrose, who is a typical teenager in lots of ways apart from being a genius and an astronaut, manages to coax Kodiak out and immediately starts thinking lustful thoughts about him. Kodiak, whose country is much more austere and militarized than Ambrose's, very gradually warms up to him.

And then what I thought was going to be a slow-burn gay YA romance in a science fiction setting takes a huge left turn. To be fair, it does still centrally involve a gay YA romance. But the science fiction aspect isn't just there as a cool background. It's actually a YA science fiction novel that has a romance along with a plot that goes in multiple unexpected directions, and is very moving in a way that's only possible because of the science fiction elements.

If you're a stickler for hard science fiction in which everything is definitely possible/likely, this probably has at least one too many "I don't think that's likely to work that way" moments for you. But if you'd like to read a fun and touching science fiction adventure-romance that will probably surprise you at least once, just read the book without knowing anything more.

( Spoilers! )

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Fairy Cat, by Hisa Takano

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 18:04:23 GMT

One rainy day Kanade, a high school student, finds a mouse-sized cat in his room. It's a fairy cat or "palm-sized cat!" They are elusive magical creatures which sometimes adopt humans, but mostly behave like ordinary cats. Only extra-tiny!

That's about it for the plot. What this manga is actually about is showing an incredibly adorable tiny cat being an incredibly adorable tiny cat. It's an incredibly adorable manga. Proof:

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The Huntress, by Kate Quinn

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 19:44:28 GMT

In this engrossing historical novel, three storylines converge on a single target, a female Nazi nicknamed the Huntress. During the war, we follow Nina, one of the Soviet women who flew bomber runs and were known as the Night Witches. After the war, we follow Ian, a British war correspondent turned Nazi hunter, who has teamed up with Nina to hunt down the Huntress as Nina is one of the very few people who saw her face and survived. At the same time, in Boston, we follow Jordan, a young woman who wants to be a photographer and is suspicious of the beautiful German immigrant her father wants to marry...

In The Huntress, we often know what has happened or surely must happen, but not why or how; we know Nina somehow ended up facing off with the Huntress, but not how she got there or how she escaped; we know who Jordan's stepmom-to-be is and that she'll surely be unmasked eventually, but not how or when that'll happen or how the confrontation will go down. There's a lot of suspense but none of it depends on shocking twists, though there are some unexpected turns.

Nina and Jordan are very likable and compelling, especially Nina who is kind of a force of nature. It took me a while to warm up to Ian, but I did about halfway through. Nina's story is fascinating and I could have read a whole novel just about her and her all-female regiment, but I never minded switching back to Jordan as while her life is more ordinary, it's got this tense undercurrent of creeping horror as she and everyone around her are being gaslit and manipulated by a Nazi.

This is the kind of satisfying, engrossing historical novel that I think used to be more common, though this one probably has a lot more queerness than it would have had if it had been written in the 80s - a woman/woman relationship is central to the story, and there are multiple other queer characters. It has some nice funny moments and dialogue to leaven a generally serious story (Nina in particular can be hilarious), and there's some excellent set piece action scenes. If my description sounds good to you, you'll almost certainly enjoy it.

Spoilers! ( Read more... )

Quinn has written multiple historical novels, mostly set during or around WW2. This is the first I've read but it made me want to read more of hers.

Content notes: Wartime-typical violence, gaslighting, a child in danger. The Huntress murdered six children, but this scene does not appear on-page. There is no sexual assault and no scenes in concentration camps.

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Krampus, by Brom

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 17:57:13 GMT

Brom was a fantasy illustrator before he started writing his own books. They all contain spectacular color plates as well as black and white illustrations, which add a lot to the story.

Krampus opens with a prologue of the imprisoned Krampus vowing revenge on Santa Claus, then cuts to Santa Claus being chased through a trailer park by horned goblins, one of whom falls to his death when Santa escapes on his sleigh drawn by flying reindeer.

But he left his sack behind, which is promptly picked up Jesse, who just moments previously was considering suicide because he's basically a character from a country song: he's broke; his wife left him, taking their kid with her, and she's now with the town sheriff; Jesse never had the music career he wanted because of poor self-esteem and stage fright, AND he's being forced to do dangerous drug smuggling by the crime lord who runs the town with help from the sheriff. Santa's sack will provide any toy you want, but only toys; Jesse, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, uses it get his daughter every toy she's ever wanted, so now his wife thinks he stole them and the corrupt sheriff is on his ass again. And so are Krampus's band of Bellsnickles, who also want the sack because it's the key to freeing Krampus...

This book is absolutely nuts. The tone isn't as absurd as the summary might make it sound; it is often pretty funny, but it's more of a mythic fantasy meets gritty crime drama, sort of like Charles de Lint was writing in the 80s. Absolutely the best part is when Krampus finally gets to be Krampus in the modern day, spreading Yule tidings, terrorizing suburban adults, and terrifying but also delighting suburban children.

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