Today’s subject is a powerful, much-anticipated sequel, The Thrice-Bound Fool by Christopher Buehlman. Fool is the second book in the Blacktongue series, except it's actually the third. Buehlman put out The Blacktongue Thief in 2021 about the protagonist Kinch, then put out a prequel book called The Daughters' War in 2024 about his protagonist Galva,…
I don’t know if this will resonate with anyone else, but I am kinda tired of science fiction books that look at the myriad looming global crises and simply wave them away with “everything is going to be fine; it will all work out.” I have recently started seeking out depictions of our future that…
Continue reading ➞ Ode To The Half-Broken – Redefining Success
Bodies of Magic, by Freya Marske, is a fun, clever book that’s a little rough around the edges but will be a new all-time favorite for a specific kind of reader. The book is an explosively successful mix of popular subgenres (medical drama, dark academia, and murder mystery) that feels different from many of the…
Continue reading ➞ Bodies Of Magic – Magical Medical Murder Mystery
Engines of Reason, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, is an eagerly anticipated sequel to Elder Race, my absolute favorite novella. In some ways, I was a little sad that Tchaikovsky decided to write Engines of Reason. I fundamentally believe that Elder Race is so perfect that it can’t be improved on, but Tchaikovsky has proven me wrong…
Continue reading ➞ Engines Of Reason – Iterating On Perfection
The publisher renamed this series to the Ana and Din Mysteries while I wasn’t looking, and I only just realized. We are off to a great start. Well, the formerly called Shadow of the Leviathan series got its third installment this month, and as always, anything that Robert Jackson Bennett puts out does numbers with…
BookTok-beloved debut The Demon Star, by Jesse Aragon, has been getting non-stop incredible reviews, to the point that I wondered if it was productive for me to review it. It’s an ambitious science-fantasy story set on an arid and desolate alien world, very reminiscent of genre behemoths Dune and Sun Eater in a lot of…
Continue reading ➞ The Demon Star – A Sad Demon Clown On Fire
It takes a really talented pair of authors to take a subject I am actively disinterested in and transform it into one of the most fun and compelling books of 2026. M.A. Carrick is a pair of authors (Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms) who wrote the incredible Rook & Rose series, which I am obsessed…
The Dragon Has Some Complaints, by John Wiswell, is a premise that is absolutely packed with clever ideas and promising concepts. Our main character is a once four, now three, headed hydra-esk dragon named Garrodigh, the Great Terror. I am assuming he takes inspiration from King Ghidorah, of Godzilla fame, from the name and design,…
Continue reading ➞ The Dragon Has Some Complaints – Hydralarious And Hydrafelt
The long-awaited sequel to Natalie Zina Walschots’ Hench is an extremely weird follow-up titled Villain that goes in directions I absolutely was not expecting. This itself is not surprising, given how refreshing and weird Hench was when it burst onto the scene, so it remains doubly impressive that Walschots was able to still surprise me.…
Letting the cat right out of the bag, I think Platform Decay is pretty bad. Martha Wells’ Murderbot series has been one of my favorite stories in recent years, even though it feels like a book that was split up to make more money at this point. The last two entries (Fugitive Telemetry and System…
