Reviews and Comments

To Ride a Rising Storm is the second book in Moniquill Blackgoose's Nampeshiweisit series, an indigenous story about dragons, colonizers, and fantasy dragon school. This was a lot of fun to read, but this felt like mostly open-ended setup for a future book rather than a cohesive story on its own. The ongoing threat in the first book is that if Anequs doesn't pass her classes then her dragon Kasaqua will be killed. The threat in the second book is... question mark??

This book is still a school story at its heart, but it gets a little bit more into larger politics of the world than the first book was able to. The Ravens of Joden are clearly the "hearken back to the whiter past" dissidents, but simultaneously the Jarl in power working against the Ravens is removing their representatives, adding surveillance and preventing free movement on Anequs's island, and suppressing dissent everywhere. It feels like there's some room for nuance about Anequs choosing to support neither of these powers (in some future book). All of this is great.

The polyamory angle is more nuanced than I would have expected to get from a young adult book. Anequs is interested in both Liberty (a black school servant) and Theod (a fellow indigenous dragoneer classmate). This is my own personal beef with other fiction (YA specifically), but I really dislike love triangles that turn into jealousy subplots and it's a relief that there's none of that here. I like that all three of them are very different people with different needs. Theod is afraid of not living up to Anglish morals and would prefer marriage. Anequs wishes she could bring everybody back to her home island where these sorts of relationships are supported, but also wants nothing to do with marriage right now. Liberty knows she could never marry Anequs and dreams of her own place to live above a shop (and definitely not Anequs' island).

As a reader it's easy to root for Anequs to just follow her heart, but Theod and Liberty both bring their own pragmatism about the world they're living in and the precarity of their social relationships. One small detail I also appreciate that this book has the three of them asking about kissing (and sometimes even declining). Maybe it feels too adult and communication-forward, but it makes it very comfy to me.

I enjoyed the book, but the pacing was extremely unexpected. I remarked to myself while reading that I was on page 270/440 and Anequs is still in the first week of classes learning about in-universe atomic bonds without there being any real conflict yet. This book is characterized by ongoing simmering background political tension while setting up a lot of ongoing plotlines. The first big event that feels like a payoff of the tension happens outside of the school, away from Anequs, most of the way through the book. Then, only in the final chapter or two does the final ball scene escalate into something more substantial. I don't know that I would recommend reading this book until the next book is out.

I quite enjoyed this book that plumbs the emotional waters of an estrangement between the narrator Yoella and her daughter Leah. The writing (in translation from Hebrew) is delicious and full of meandering sentences. I love the way that Yoella reads a lot and so this book itself can explicitly reference other texts.

It's a book focusing on the relationship between Yoella and Leah, but it's also about motherhood and family in general--that motherhood is forgetting, what love actually means and can look like, and about constructing narratives of the past and of each other. Somehow Yoella manages to be utterly open in dissecting her feelings and her past, but simultaneously unreliable and self-deceiving.

But stories about mothers and daughters are always in media res, working backward to the beginning, even as there is no beginning. The path is simple yet crooked, the beginning slinks ever further away. As with the universe or numbers, there is no beginning.

In the first dozen pages, Yoella describes a Scandanavian movie where a beautiful family experiences a brief avalanche; the avalanche never comes close to touching the family but in the pivotal seconds of danger, the father runs away while the mother protects the children, and this is the crack in the family. The rest of the movie is about the rift that this "easily made yet unforgivable mistake" creates, told with Swedish restraint. This movie, told in reverse, is the best description of the book that I can give.

There's a lot of neat things going on in this book, but there's also a number of things that didn't quite land for me. I'm struggling to have a solid opinion, so here's a mishmash of drive-by thoughts.

I do love this book's thematic mantra of fixing broken things. It's clear that many characters in this book are broken (emotionally), and it's clear that the Boston timeline is broken (structurally, via capitalism largely), but it's less clear to me what sort of fixing is truly going on, especially in a multiverse sense.

Obviously Martin, Stirling, and Melissa are putting in work for their community, but the rest of it just seems like talk (or something a future book in the series will get to). I wish there was more clarity about how Jace had broken his oath to repair the broken parts of the universe, and what that oath actually means to Jace and Corinne. (Has Harnett sworn this same oath? Also, what is this oath as compared to the Network's "greatest good" motto??)

I think the pacing of the end of the book is also a little harmed by this being part of a series. There's clearly a climactic confrontation, but it largely feels unresolved, leaving lots of pieces for the future.

This sounds like a lot of complaints, but I enjoyed my read here. I do love a telepathic dog. I love the idea of talking to a therapist about portals to other worlds. I love Jace and Corinne working together for a shared goal while also being so misaligned. I love Martin still working to care for Reina even when Reina is not his sister. Overall, my favorite part of this book was all of the characters.

(This was the #SFFBookClub book for March 2026.)

Does anyone want a “cozy” story about the grief of disappointing your friends, and the agony of saying “no”?

Maybe it's my age, but I think I can always deeply appreciate a story centered on the idea of a change in life direction--there's a job that's consumed you to the point of you making it your identity and suddenly it's taken away from you (see: Bujold's Memory), or where a fulfilling job that your family and friends all expect you to do that has lost its luster, or when you've been doing the same job for hundreds of years and who would you even be if you weren't doing that. I am just a sucker for stories about new directions.

It's not that Viv wasn't changing her life in Legends & Lattes, but she wasn't really struggling against herself: she knew she wanted to hang up her sword and open a fantasy coffee shop. It doesn't quite resonate the same way as Fern's struggle does in this book, and it makes this book much stronger. Honestly, I most appreciate that this Travis Baldree book has an answer to the "how do I change my life when it's not working" question that doesn't end directly in fantasy small business. I also appreciate that Astryx and Fern are both thematically struggling with their own relationships with their own work, and have different answers to that question.

This is still a fluffy story (and if L&L wasn't your thing, I don't know that I'd recommend this one to you), but this is absolutely the strongest book in the trilogy for me.

Additional minor rambling:

Because Zyll is an uncontainable goblin menace and Astryx is on a hopeless quest to contain her while somehow bringing her to justice, it creates a nice plot dynamic. Astryx doesn't have to be the terrible mercenary out to get a bounty on a loveable side character--it can be comic relief where Zyll escapes her bonds but then comes along anyway. It removes some seriousness, and makes it more about the relationships between the characters. And, Zyll at least gets some explanation in the end for her behavior, so it's not entirely fluff either.

(I think also you might want to have read Goblins & Greatcoats to get an introduction to Zyll and the titular breadknife. It's not that important, but it also makes that appearance of the titular breadknife even more random without that morsel of backstory.)

If I had any negatives, it's that I still squint so hard at the economics of this world. The threat in this story is that friends will be disappointed in you. There is very little worry around the fact that you (and your friends) have invested huge amounts of money in opening a bookstore business in a new town. In some ways, I feel like the small business capitalism aspect of these books undermines the cozy flavor that it's going for. I think there's just a dissonance to me where concerns about money are brushed under the rug and there's an assumption that everybody and everything will be fine without any worldbuilding or explanation for why that is.

Fun, short, quotable.

The first book in this series was a riff on the Fall of the House of Usher (that we read for #SFFBookClub), and the second book intersected quite well with Easton's war trauma. This third book reads like a monster of the week but without much else going on in terms of themes or character development. A good snack of a romp, but not very filling.

(Also, shaking my head that there's no Eugenia Potter in this one either. It does at least have Gallacian rock pronouns going for it though.)

The biggest feeling I come away from James Islington's Hierarchy series is that it seems like it should appeal to fans of Brandon Sanderson. If the first book was an introduction to the world and young protagonist, this second book is much happier to dish out worldbuilding details about what's going on in the larger world(s). It's a grippy action book, and the way the worldbuilding is slowly revealed is my favorite part of this book. The second book also manages to pull out its own big ending surprises to drive who knows what will happen in the next one.

My biggest complaint is that this is primarily a plot-driven book and the protagonist is a bit too special. If there is a competition or challenge of any sort, Vis is going to overcome it every single time, no matter the odds, and no matter if he's never fought in magic armor or snuck into a pyramid or driven in a magic chariot race or trained to be a dancer or whatever. The book doesn't leave that much room for characterization, and secondary characters are pretty heavy-handed about their one-note thematic opinions.

Overall, I just wish the characters were a bit less flat. I feel like this is the kind of book I would have devoured when I was younger, but cool worldbuilding isn't quite enough sustenance these days.

The situation was terrifying, but the project itself was awesome.

A bunch of my friends were rereading this book before the movie came out, so I thought I'd join along. Project Hail Mary is another space engineering procedural with Andy Weir protagonist voice. The characters are pretty thin, but I think you're reading this for the science problem solving. I always appreciate interspersed flashbacks (especially here where there's a bit of a reason why Grace continues to remember more over time).

I also personally don't know that this book makes for especially great movie material, but what do I know. (On this reread, there was also some airquotes jokes that really didn't land for me along the lines of "wow it'd be bad if I were fatphobic/racist/a pedophile" and I'm throwing a few side eyes.)

joke tagline: a secret former prince struggles to move up the ladder at magic school for future senators in post-apocalyptic fantasy Rome

It's grippy. It's bloody and violent at times. The fantasy worldbuilding was fun. I wouldn't quite say it's YA, but it is also a young protagonist in a school setting where some moments resonate with the Hunger Games. It was enjoyable in a childhood need for fantasy book with a young protagonist in a capitalist-metaphor magic dystopia sort of way.

What this book does especially well for me is how many different directions it pulls the main character in. He's keeping his past a secret and trying to follow his own goals while simultaneously investigating a mystery, being suborned by rebels, and trying to succeed at school. There's a lot of lying and sneaking that's delicious. Being overconstrained by external forces helps balance out the plot elements of Vis being too capable across multiple disciplines.

It's also got some excellent plot twists (more like twist of the knife for Vis) as well as some wild worldbuilding at the end setting up for who knows what book two (or three or four) will look like.

Dead Hand Rule is third (of four) books in Max Gladstone's Craft Wars sequence. Interestingly to me, this book works a lot better for me than Wicked Problems did.

Their power might be vast, but it was bound, as surely as any djinn’s: to wield it they had to be themselves, and they could not act in ways unlike them. If we let them sit there growling at one another across conference tables, that’s all they’ll do, until the stars fall down.

I've seen Gladstone pitch this book as featuring "wizard Davos", which sounds like it shouldn't be good, but somehow works. The heart of this series is economics (via magic metaphor) and this book features large powers in the world coming together, but not actually able to work with each other to stop impending doom. The end of the world is coming, and they're all working to try to get a short-term or long-term advantage over the other rather than to try to stop the invasion of spider capitalism gods.

Some of what also worked in this book is my own expectations. I loved the narrow character focus of Dead Country and its themes. I was unprepared for the second book's extended Marvel Universe shift into bringing every character we've ever known onto the page. This was also a shift from all of the previous Craft Sequence books, which tended to be more self-contained. In any case, I was more prepared for what the scope of the third book would be, but I also feel like it was more tightly written. The focus felt much more on Tara and Kai as primary point of view characters, and interspersed others as needed.

Subjectively, it felt like characters had a little bit more room to breathe rather than be pulled by the madcap plot. I think some of this is the the plot all takes place in and around Alt Columb (which is where the first Craft Sequence book in publication order takes place). All the players of interest are already in the same place, rather than jumping around the world and picking up additional parts of the cast.

All in all, I quite enjoyed it and am deeply looking forward to the final book in the sequence to see what comes.

Small things I really enjoyed about this book that I'll list without any context: * the Donnie and Gav comedy routine * fucking Eberhardt Jax * Denovo's machinations coming back much more strongly here * Elayne Ex Machina * Abelard coming into his own too * nonexistent Temoc/Kopil shippers eating well

(Also a shout out to the Hidden Schools blog which has a lot of series analysis, but especially has a great "story so far" summation prior to this book.)

This book was not for me. Maybe I was in the wrong space for reading it, but it felt like YA (derogatory). Everything felt a little too thin and pulled along by a plot. Folks who are at odds with each other resolve those feelings too quickly or in ways that feel unearned. (Especially feelings around Alekhai and Sijara both.)

There were a lot (a lot) of fight scenes. To me a good fight scene is like a good sex scene--there needs to be some character development driving it or I'm going to be bored. Many of these fell flat for me, but positively I really liked the one where Fen meets Alekhai for the first time, because there's so much going on emotionally for her there.

The book has so much intriguing drive-by worldbuilding, but none of it feels connected to the whole. Declaration ceremonies for names and genders come up and are never mentioned again. The world is full of nanites? Undetectable alien neural chips?! The Accusers could have been been building infrastructure and teleporting food the whole time? Resurrected people are supposed to come back not quite the same, but this never happens (emotionally or mentally)?

I was really intrigued by the idea of the ecologically failing Newearth, and the capital letters of the Makers, Accusers, and Executors who constructed the situation and are still present. Unfortunately, they are all ultimately set dressing for the rebellion against the king who must die, and none of it truly gets fleshed out to any satisfying degree.

The fantasy politics of this world also felt a bit short. The word anarchism is only used once as a pejorative, and the replacement for the titular king is the glory of democracy. With minimal spoilers, the "mini boss" that must be faced before the "final boss" is group infighting. I'm not sure if I had a specific desire from this novel, but I was hoping there'd be something more weird, more speculative, more interesting. Maybe it's just me, but this kind of arc is not enough for me these days (and democracy doesn't really feel like the shiniest of destinations either).

Minorly, I saw a blurb that Alekhai is supposed to be trans-coded, but I'm not sure I see it. Is it just because everybody says he's so beautiful (as all of my trans friends are)? Is it that he says he would have used a randomizer for his declaration ceremony if he could? I would credit this more if I felt like it came up in any other way.

I don't like to complain about a book so much, but sometimes I have to articulate all the things that didn't work in order to understand my own feelings. A story about found family and the destruction of empire should have resonated with me a lot more deeply. I don't feel like this book was bad more than I was just disappointed--it didn't cohere for me and live up to what I hoped it could be.

(This was the #SFFBookClub pick for February 2026.)

I always enjoy Nghi Vo's Singing Hills Cycle stories. There's something about the idea of monks going around and collecting knowledge and stories that manages to always be compelling.

A Mouthful of Dust is a short novella centered on food, survival, and secrets that don't want to be revealed. It did not dislodge Mammoths at the Gates as my favorite Singing Hills book, but it was still an enjoyable snack.

Thanks as always go to my agent, Diana Fox, who told me back in 2020 that maybe the world wasn’t ready for famine and eating babies. Then in 2024, she said, “Okay, they may be ready now,” and here we are.

Along with having a recipe for curry, I was amused at some of the author's notes at the end of the book.

Classic Scalzi popcorn, spiced with snark.

It's a solid book, don't get me wrong. Good foreshadowing and callbacks. Good worldbuilding for the series and setup for future books. The plot was grippy in the moment.

My biggest disappointment is that protagonist's defining characteristic is that she's naught more than a hypercompetent ball of snark; it makes her uninteresting, and it felt like we were told more about her emotions from her father than we got shown ourselves.

This was one of the books up for the #SFFBookClub poll that didn't win. The airquotes downside of putting the polls together is that everything on there is something I want to read, so I end up reading them all anyway.

This book was pitched as "a generation ship novel in verse" and it delivered. It felt like such a fresh way to talk about old concepts, and its flowery imagery felt less out of place than it would have in prose. It could have stood to be more weird, but each point of view had striking and effectively different styles, especially in terms of format, but also in imagery and tone and pacing. Overall, the plot didn't strike me as being particularly novel, but it was enjoyable and that wasn't really why I was coming to this book in the first place.

Hey you! (Yes, you!) If you're seeing this, then you probably have an adjacent taste in books, so this could likely be of interest to you.

We're reading The King Must Die during this February for #SFFBookClub.

SFFBookClub is an asynchronous fediverse book club. There's no meeting or commitment. If this book looks interesting to you, then you can join in by reading it during February and posting on the hash tag #SFFBookClub with any feelings or thoughts or reviews or quotes.

More details: sffbookclub.eatgod.org/

This is one of those 5/5 ratings where I don't think the book is perfect, but it gets it because it is so intensely targeted at my own interests and I'm so grateful to have read it. Some bullet points to entice you:

• anti-capitalism, anti-cop
• train heists
• found family vibes
• first person point of view with an internalized narration to a second person "you"
• fantasy religions that don't feel like direct analogies of real ones
• revenge plot and revolutionaries
• gaaaaaaay

The book is so unapologetically queer and kinky, it's great. The author credits Stone Butch Blues (among many other things) in the end notes, which feels entirely unsurprising. The gender-y and queer bits also both intersect with the in-world religions in realistic ways.

It's a book that desperately needs a map; there's a pile of countries, religions, and politics especially when it hits the Chauncey estate section. The book does a good job of keeping it all ~~straight~~ queerly differentiated but the world has so much texture--it's a ttrpg campaign setting crying out for illustration! It also feels like a living world; characters having a life both off-page and outside of the protagonist make it feel even more real.

The book opens with a labor dispute and police violence and sworn revenge, but from there it doesn't shy away from critiques of power and incrementalism and reformers. There's some wild rich people monologues where they unintentionally bare themselves as soulless vampires. There's a bandit charade of a hidden equitable country, pretending to be part of a baronial system.

Sunlight licked between bruisy limestone smokestacks and telegraphy spires, and the crumbling knuckled colonnades of an empire that's long gone.

I found the writing to be a delight: the narrator is at times unreliable, and the writing is full of dreamy metaphors. At times, somebody will bust out with a multi-page exposition about religion, or a set of introductions to a full dramatis personae worth of baronets. The final lap of the book has its own tonal shift that I won't get into for reasons. Somehow this all held together for me; maybe it's that none of these parts overstayed their welcome. I'm sure some folks will bounce off of this writing style, but I'm not folks, that's for sure.

Being a Hereafterist is a commitment to creating a brand-new world all the time. It is the method of making a new world, it does not stop, we are never there yet. We have never arrived at a restful Hereafter, we must keep making. We will become a liberated collective, a plague will roll over us, and a famine, and fifty thousand bullets, and we will need to make choices. We will need to change. We must resist the ossification of precedent. We march toward Hereafter, not tomorrow, we march past tomorrow, we know tomorrow will be hard.

In the end, this is a fuck yeah revenge story about disaster queers fighting capitalism with violence. It's less about answers or even hope, and more about conveying a sense of angry determinism working for a future none of them will see.