Let’s close the spooky season with an out-of-this-world but extremely relatable horror novella, Walking Practice, by author Dolki Min. It’s funny, it’s gory, and it’s going to stir up your emotions and encourage examination of love, identity, and how we connect as humans. After crash-landing on Earth, a solitary alien has spent years perfecting its…
Continue reading ➞ Walking Practice – Survival Of The Fittest
On September 1st of 2025, the conclusion to one of my favorite recent fantasy series is releasing. With seven installments, this novella saga is criminally underread, and the final entry sticks a ten-point landing. I am talking about The Infernus Gate, novella seven of The Seven Swords by Anthony Ryan. I don’t know what I…
I am trying to get to a lot more novellas this year, which means the lot of you will have to put up with some quickfire reviews about some quickfire books. Automatic Noodle, by Annalee Newitz, is a short 200-page novella about a near-future American dystopia where a collection of abandoned service robots open a…
In anticipation of book two in S.T. Gibson’s The Summoner’s Circle coming out in July, I decided to read the series’ prequel novella, Odd Spirits. Book one of the series, Evocation, was fantastic, and I was curious to see the characters before they became entangled in David’s deal with the devil. So let’s take it…
I recently finished a big sci-fi book and was looking for something short and sweet to help me come back down from the stars. While Uncommon Charm by Emily Bergslien and Kat Weaver is certainly short, its sweetness is contained in a friendship growing quietly in the backdrop of a sinister family secret that is…
The decadent debauchery of the 1920s has been put to bed, but Nghi Vo still has a story to tell. Vo returns to her Gatsby retelling with a companion novella, Don’t Sleep with the Dead, to expand on Nick Carraway’s story. I have avoided spoilers for The Chosen and the Beautiful in my review, but…
I have some ground to cover before our end-of-the-year wrap-up, so I am saving some space by talking about two great stories by the same author in a single review. It has been a big fall for Ryan, which means a great season for readers. Today’s books are both phenomenal, but are each a little…
Continue reading ➞ A Tide Of Black Steel + The Road of Storms – Anthony Ryan Double Hitter
Anyone who wants to put out any short-form content should be taking notes from Nghi Vo—her ability to put out consistently well-written and captivating stories at around the two-hundred-page mark. You might naively think that shorter books are easier to write than longer books, and I would think you are wrong. It takes extreme focus…
Continue reading ➞ The City In Glass – Break For A Good Time
Today we have an exciting novella called The Fireborne Blade by Charlotte Bond. It is the first in a novella series following the exploits of a dragonslayer named Maddileh. She is a rare lady knight, and there aren’t many women in her line of work. This comes with the classic fantasy period piece sexism package…
Boy, do I have a tasty box of treats for you today. Under My Skin, by K.J. Parker, is a collection of novellas and novelettes all taking place in the same collective universe and focusing on the subject of people who are not what they seem. Parker is a master of short stories and even…
