A Necromancer Called Gam Gam was one of my favourite books I read last year—An unlikely blend of knitting, kindness, and raising the decaying undead that took me on an emotional journey exploring loss and grief. So when The Wishing Stone was announced, I was so ready for another foray into this big warm hug of a world. And, spoilers for the review below, but I think this one really does top the...

A poignant and somewhat scarily prescient short story collection from Conrad Altmann. I had the privilege of beta reading one of the short stories—Luminite Ascending—that made it into this collection. That one was brilliant, and at the time I didn’t realise Conrad was looking to make a collection. So when Moral Laundry came out, I was really looking forward to checking out the other stories...

Gotta love long titles for short stories. On Demon Wrangling and Interpersonal Relationships Between Weary Immortals is certainly eye-catching and intriguing, and that’s what got me to pick it up. Also because I have read several of Rebecca’s short stories at this point and knew I was in for a treat. Vampyres and Witches make for strange bedfellows, and especially since I’ve been watching What...

A deliciously creepy yet cathartic dark fairy tale. Rebecca Crunden’s short stories and novellas are always a great time. I expected no different from Bailuchien, and I am pleased to say I was right on the money. Unfortunately at the time of writing this review, Bailuchien has been taken down temporarily, which makes posting the review to Amazon and Goodreads somewhat tricky (I literally can't...

A strikingly well-written prequel novella to B.S.H. Garcia’s Heart of Quinaria series. Continuing my read-through of SFINCS novellas, next up is B.S.H. Garcia’s From the Depths, which was a finalist in the second year’s contest. For ages I thought it was in the first one, but in putting together this review I realised that while Garcia had a book in SFINCS 1, it was From the Ashes, which I have...

A dark and melancholy fantasy novella from Timothy Wolff. First of all, let me just say that The Whisper that Replaced God is a hell of a title for a book. Kudos on that. And now, having read it and fully understanding the reference, it still hits really hard but in a much more poignant way. And the cover is brilliant as well. What a way to draw you in. This continues my read-through of some of...

I never know how much to say about short stories in reviews. They’re short, so the reviews should be short, too, right? If that’s a thing at all, I’m not sure this one bears that out! I’ve read some of Rebecca’s work before—You can read my reviews of Dust & Lightning and A Touch of Death here—and I’ve got plenty more of her books still to read. The Knight Saves the Dragon is a bit different...

An excellent blend of science fiction and magical fantasy with romance, and LGBTQIA+ and disability representation, from Barry Ryerson. I’ve been looking forward to reading The Magic Circle for quite a long time. The curse of being a mood reader! That being said, it still took me a while to read the book. That’s not a slight on the book at all, though. I’ve been busier than usual and I didn’t...

Historically I’ve not always been the biggest horror fan. Usually something has to get just the right mix of sci-fi and horror for me to be into it, like the Alien movies, Event Horizon, or Dead Space. Very rarely do I go in for some more traditional spooky ghost stories, and I’m happy to say that BestGhost was a great novelette to help me dip my toes into the genre...

Here we are at last: The end of Dune. Or, at least at the end of Frank Herbert’s original novels. I know there’s plenty of expanded universe stuff out there from his son, Brian, but I’ve heard enough about it to know it’s something I don’t really want to explore. It’s taken me four years to read this series—it’s a pretty leisurely pace, and I found I needed a long time between these books to...

I loved the TV show adaptation of The Expanse. Coming in with a take so cold it’ll give you frostbite: I think it’s one of the best science fiction shows we’ve had in a very long time. In fact, I struggle to think of anything that compares, since the likes of Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis. Okay, that take might be a little warmer. Fight me. So I was very much looking forward to diving into...

I very much enjoyed the first book in the cosy fantasy series that has took the bookish community by storm—you can read my review of Legends & Lattes here—and so I was very excited when I saw that another entry was in the works. As with all things on the endless TBR, it’s taken me a while to get to Bookshops & Bonedust but it certainly provided me with some lovely, warm respite this winter...

I picked up How Do You Live? by Genzaburo Yoshino precisely for the reason you might think: It was touted as the inspiration behind Hayao Miyazaki’s latest Studio Ghibli movie, The Boy and the Heron. And I think I may have misunderstood what that meant at first. But after correcting my impressions, I still wanted to give it a read. It’s my first real foray into literary fiction and while there...

The covers for the Weight of the World trilogy are all so good it’s almost unfair. They look absolutely fantastic. So, Recall Order is my first indie of 2025! I’ve been really enjoying this trilogy so far, and I do highly recommend picking them up if you like military sci-fi, space opera, mechs and alien invasion stories. But with this second instalment we can add terrorism thrillers and espion...

If you had told me when I was a teenager struggling to get through The Lord of the Rings and bouncing off the Entmoot that I would one day not only gleefully smash through the whole trilogy but then follow it up by reading The Silmarillion in just one week, I’d have laughed in your face. But inexplicably, here we are. And as personal reading achievements go, this one is something of which I am...

I liked doing this reading wrap-up thing last year. It gave me an opportunity to showcase once again all the books I read and reviewed this year. Review posts are often ephemeral—even though they’re on the internet forever, once they’ve been posted on the socials, they’re quickly forgotten and buried. So this is a great chance to bring some more well-deserved attention to the books...

Dragonmeat is another of the books from the first SFINCS competition that I have been meaning to read for a long time. Initially I thought it was going to be a bit longer than the previous two I’ve read, but the book ended while I was still at 75% on the Kindle, and this is because the first chapter of Fortune’s Fool, the first novel in the Eterean Empire series, is included at the back as a...

Continuing on with my decision to read some of the novellas from last year’s Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championships, here we have contest winner A Sorrow Named Joy by Sarah Chorn. The cover art on this book is wonderful, and after reading, it really captures a lot of the heart of the character of Joy. Although I will freely admit that I’m a bit of an idiot. Before I realised what this...

The second annual Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championships (SFINCS) is well underway and almost into its second round, and it’s an exciting time for all of this year’s entrants. It’s well worth keeping an eye on for some incredible novellas to add to your burgeoning TBRs. So I decided that it was high time I actually read some of the books from my fellow entrants from last year’s...

Here we are at last. It’s been a long time coming—years in the trying—but I have finally finished a full read-through of The Lord of the Rings. After the surprising ease of reading The Two Towers, The Return of the King was a step into totally uncharted waters. And what a remarkable ending this was for the trilogy. I’ve stopped my read at the end of the narrative chapters, short of the...