2026 read #22: The Far Edges of the Known World by Owen Rees.

The Far Edges of the Known World: Life Beyond the Borders of Ancient Civilizations by Owen Rees

314 pages

Published 2025

Read from April 1 to April 6

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

I began the reading year strong, but in the last few weeks, my attention span has petered out for one reason and another. (The shadow of a mad king with his thumbs on the nuclear buttons has a lot to do with it.) Whenever my reading falters, I find it helps to get my hands on an interesting but breezy non-fiction book, shaking up my typical diet of fantasy. That’s particularly apropos this year; this is the first work of non-fiction I’ve picked up in all of 2026.

Histories of cultural exchange are one of my big hyperfocuses. I love histories that concern themselves less with kings and wars and more with actual humans. All our cultural myths of “peoples” and “races,” assembled in the early modern era of nation states, fall apart against the reality of how much people, and culture, have always mixed and intermingled. Modern day fash might love the Romans because of their martial misogyny and oppressive hierarchy; I love Roman history because of how people moved all over the empire, from Syria and Mauritania to Britain and Dacia. Despotic elites, not immigrants, caused Rome to fall. There are lessons to learn there.

The Far Edges is right up my alley, offering quick examinations of places at the edges of empire, from ancient cattle herders at Lake Turkana to the city of Co Loa in what is now Vietnam. Rees writes a popularly accessible history in competent, unremarkable prose. Each chapter offers an appetizer of a much vaster, richer story, leaving me wanting more. Honestly, I’d read a book-length examination of any of the sites Rees describes. And that, as always, is the takeaway from books like this: I wish there were more to it.

2026 read #21: some minor, sometimes divine, existential crises by Morgan L. Ventura.

some minor, sometimes divine, existential crises by Morgan L. Ventura

13 pages

Published 2024

Read March 26

Rating: 4 out of 5

A brief but delightful chapbook about academia, anthropology, aliens, and yes, existential crises. Ventura communicates feelings of dislocation and academic listlessness with blunt, sometimes hilarious, sometimes fiercely beautiful prose-poetry. As a former archaeologist myself, this precious handful of poems struck something buried deep within my heart.

2026 read #20: New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, Fall 2023 issue.

New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, Fall 2023 issue (1:1)

Edited by Oliver Brackenbury

80 pages

Published 2023

Read from March 19 to March 26

Rating: 3 out of 5

The first thing I notice about this issue, the first “official” issue of NESS, is how much more polished the printing and presentation is compared to issue 0. We’ve upgraded from cut-rate print-on-demand quality to a much more professional printing, and the layout and artwork has gotten crisper to match.

That brings up the second thing I notice: the artwork. This issue is bursting with terrific black-and-white artwork, and the cover image is instantly iconic. I’m so excited for this issue!

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“Carnivora” by Kirk A. Johnson. This story sits at the intersection of Sword & Soul and Spear & Fang. It should check all my boxes for a good time. There’s grisly magic, towering demons, memorable depictions. There’s even a passing reference to the skull of a Styracosaurus. The story itself didn’t fully click for me, though. The prose was just kind of there, not bad but lacking a certain oomf. It was fine, but I had hoped for more from it. I will say it’s a lot better (and gnarlier) than my own Spear & Fang draft. I should get a lot weirder with it.

“Come Lay the Crone to Rest” by Margaret Killjoy. The proverbial “D&D campaign turned into a story,” starring a polyamorous trio of adventurers checking out the magical instability left by the death of the grandmother of one of their party. I loved the idea of it, and the art that accompanies it is killer, perfectly capturing that early 1980s AD&D aesthetic. You can tell the author did her research on medieval weaponry, or else had a preexisting hyperfocus on the subject, which gave the story a fun specificity that most pseudo-medieval fantasy lacks. I found the narrative itself a bit flat, though, once again without much oomf.

Perhaps it’s me that lacks the oomf. Trying to read to distract myself from the collapse of ~everything~ isn’t working that well, neither as distraction nor as motivation to read. I’m depressed as fuck, y’all. Don’t take any anhedonic reviews here to heart.

“Sister Chaos” by Bryn Hammond. Another solid Goatskin story, though this one feels more like a hangout episode, an anecdote really, as Angaj-Duzmut and Qi Miao lose their camel and encounter a rather odd saiga antelope. I do enjoy how weird this one gets by the end, and also its intimately affirming coda.

“Chak Muuch” by Jesús Montalvo (originally published 2015). This piece brings a Second Wave Sword & Sorcery vibe to historical Chichén Itzá. It’s moderately entertaining, though blunted a bit by the way the narration insists the titular character is a cool renegade badass, instead of giving him much opportunity to show that in action.

“Tears of Eb” by Sarah A. Macklin. The first story in this issue that I felt checked all the boxes: a solid Sword & Soul entry with professional prose, interesting characters, and brisk pacing. It culminates in a fun aquatic fight against trident-wielding spirits. My favorite so far!

“The Pillars of Silence” by Prashanth Stivatsa. Another solid, professional-grade entry, a classic Sword & Sorcery outing rendered in beautiful prose. I’m reminded of Phyllis Eisenstein’s “The Island in the Lake” (read and reviewed here). This story features the same understated courage and quiet determination as an Alaric tale, albeit with a blademaster as its hero instead of a bard. I suspect there’s a parallel with Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” but somehow I’ve yet to actually read that one.

“The Folk of the Forest: An Elric Story” by Michael Moorcock. I haven’t been impressed by the Elric stories I read in the past, but I’m willing to concede that encountering only late-period Elric, without the context of the earlier stories and how they innovated what S&S could be, perhaps did me no favors. This is a new Elric story from Moorcock, commissioned specifically for NESS. It takes us back to a younger Elric, long before he went to the future and got mixed up with immortal aesthetes. Lacking the full irony of the Elric stories I read previously, “Folk” manages to capture that 1970s-does-1930s vibe that helped inspire D&D and launched a thousand painted vans. It’s a more-fleshed-out iteration on Clark Ashton Smith’s primordial weird. There are giant pirates and tiny firefly warriors. “Travel the moonroads on dream couches” is the most 1970s stoner thing I have ever read. My favorite Moorcock story by far—the first one to make me want to seek out more tales of Elric. (Though there is a portion in the middle that clearly got missed during editing; substantially overlapping dialogue repeats in a first draft sort of way.)

—

We move on to the non-fiction essays and interviews portion of the issue.

First up, we have another general essay on the theme of “Why (New Edge) Sword & Sorcery?” by Brian Murphy. It raises the interesting proposition that Sword & Sorcery waves coincide with periods of social upheaval: the Great Depression, the 1960s and ’70s, and the present.

Next, we have a profile of “Cele Goldsmith Lalli—Midwife to the Second Sword & Sorcery Boom” by Cora Buhlert. This is the type of historical essay I want to read! Fascinating and educational.

Another interview transcript sourced from editor Brackenbury’s podcast: “Fresh Blood & New Thunder! Bringing New Readers to Sword & Sorcery, with Sof Magliano.” The gimmick here is that Brackenbury gave younger fantasy fan Magliano a list of six S&S stories—three classic, three newer—to get her thoughts on finding new readers for the subgenre. This interview is how I learned about Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Return of the Sorceress. I was ready to dismiss this feature as page-filler—you could fit a whole story or two in this space—but it’s a legitimately interesting conversation, if a bit long.

Lastly, a review by Robin Marx: Woman of the Woods by Milton J. Davis. It sounds interesting.

—

And that’s it! This issue has been a slog, but I swear the problem was me this time, far more so than its contents. The last three stories absolutely clicked for me, and nothing was outright bad in my opinion. Plus, the art in this issue is amazing and bountiful. Perhaps the issue wasn’t everything I’d hoped it would be, but I’m willing to say NESS was still finding its footing at this stage.

2026 read #19: Witch Hat Atelier: Volume 14 by Kamome Shirahama.

Witch Hat Atelier: Volume 14 by Kamome Shirahama

Translated by Stephen Kohler

172 pages

Published 2025 (English translation published 2026)

Read from March 17 to March 18

Rating: 4 out of 5

Just like I said the last time I read an installment of Witch Hat Atelier, it’s been a hell of a bad ride since then. Only worse this time, what with World War III and everything.

This time, it’s been well over a year between volumes. As it should be, really—the manga industry enforces an exploitative and punishing schedule that degrades the quality of work in addition to burning out artists. I’m glad Shirahama has more time to craft her story, and her art, than the manga machine tends to permit. The line art and composition in Atelier remains exceptional and ambitious.

As a reader, though, it’s difficult to get back into the story after all this time away (and all the trauma we’ve had to live through these last fourteen months). A tertiary character’s heel turn lacks impact when I can’t remember who he is. The story doesn’t progress all that much, either. We get a ton of gorgeous, flowing art, but we end this volume basically where it began: attempting to defend the people of the city from the massive valence leech released I don’t know how many chapters ago.

Still, the art is absolutely wonderful. And we end on a lovely emotional beat between main character Coco and my personal favorite / self-insert, Agott. So I guess I’ll be generous with my grade, and I guess I’m still invested enough that I’ll wait however long for Volume 15.

2026 read #18: The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells.*

The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells*

342 pages

Published 1901

Read from March 10 to March 12

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

* Denotes a reread.

Growing up as I did living in a car with a father possessed of religious psychosis, I was rarely permitted to read anything more current than the Edwardian era. I came to cherish the works of H. G. Wells. The First Men in the Moon was a particular favorite back then. Wells’ droll social humor gives it a different flavor from his earlier scientific romances, but it’s still a novel of adventure on (and within) an alien world, one of the earliest alien worlds (that I know of) built upon the aesthetics of science rather than mysticism.

Perhaps I’d feel that way now if I read it for the first time. As it is, revisiting it felt disappointing, in a way that neither The War of the Worlds nor The Invisible Man had been. (Disregard the higher rating I gave The Invisible Man back in the day; I don’t like it better than War of the Worlds, I simply became much more critical over the years.) There’s a tonal mismatch between the social humor, which is both manic and mean-spirited, and the lunar adventure, which prefigures A. Merritt’s idiom of vast subterranean dungeons. As a preteen, I didn’t mind the mixture, but it feels to me nowadays like Wells wanted to write an observational comedy but felt constrained to churn out a scientific romance.

The overall effect is… fine? I expected more of a nostalgia kick from Moon, more in line with what I found in Worlds and The Time Machine, but it just didn’t click with me that way this time.

2026 read #17: The Tomorrow People by Judith Merril.

The Tomorrow People by Judith Merril

192 pages

Published 1960

Read from March 6 to March 10

Rating: 2 out of 5 (generously)

This novel is a weirder beast than first meets the eye. Buried deep inside of it, perhaps, there might even be an interesting story.

After the haunting, poetic prologue segued into dry space-race and Cold War fare, I felt bamboozled. The narration was the 1960 ideal of literary, naturalistic, “Manly Man drinks because he doesn’t know how to process Feelings” fiction, written with a modest amount of flair—enough flair to place it in the higher echelons of midcentury slop, but at the end of the day, I still thought it would be slop. I was pretty sure I would abandon it unfinished.

However, Tomorrow is structured with more ambition than most concurrent sci-fi. In the distant future of the 1970s, two rocketships make it to Mars: one Soviet, one American. The Soviet one disappears, the American one limps back with a solitary survivor, who seems to have blocked out what happened at the very end of things, when his companion disappeared into the Martian night in a rover. The story seems like it will be a psychological mystery, attempting to open the psyche and unravel the memories of Johnny Wendt.

Of course, this is 1960, so the “psychology” angle consists of “The first Americans on Mars feared they might be gay for each other.” (Seventeen years later, Frederik Pohl would steal this concept for Gateway, right down to the psychological analysis to uncover suppressed memories plotline, and sweep the major awards with it.) And of course, this is still a Merril novel, which means the majority of the story is phone calls and social drinking and significant lunches where no one speaks plainly and all the important stuff is beneath the surface, and then more drinking. It seems like 80% of the novel is men almost saying something while drinking. It is rather tedious.

Merril was one of the early movers in what would become sci-fi’s New Wave, which shows up here in nascent form—not just in the rather dull literary verisimilitude, but in the appearance of psionic powers as a plot point. Space amoebas amplifying psychic connections feels like a New Wave bit, too, but I guess that’s spoilers.

Also noteworthy: how openly sexual this book is. I haven’t read much midcentury literary fic, but for 1960 sci-fi, Tomorrow is positively raunchy. In addition to the pathologized queerness, we get mentions of nakedness, prostitution, a couple conceiving out of wedlock, and even an orgasm joke. Also, “bitch” appears a lot. Way too much, in fact.

Much like Merril’s Shadow on the Hearth, Tomorrow is more interesting for its place in the evolution of the genre than it is as a novel one has to read. Unless you really like midcentury scenes of drinking.

2026 read #16: The Return of the Sorceress by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

The Return of the Sorceress by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

96 pages

Published 2021

Read March 6

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

I was today years old when I learned (thanks to a feature in issue 1 of New Edge Sword & Sorcery) that Silvia Moreno-Garcia, one of my favorite authors, wrote a Sword & Sorcery novella. It was also today that I learned the book was already out of print and getting fenced for $120 online. (Such is the life-cycle of anything from Subterranean Press.) Fortuitously, I was able to borrow a copy from someone and get right into it.

The story begins in media res with our protagonist Yalxi wounded after a confrontation with her one-time beloved Xellah. As so often follows, we get some awkward exposition slapped together immediately afterward (one reason I tend to dislike in media res openings). It isn’t until the very end of the first chapter, when we get introduced to a familiar nahual spirit who must be cajoled into aiding Yalxi, that the story finally clicks. That wouldn’t matter as much in a longer work, but a novella this size doesn’t have space to spare before engaging the reader.

Luckily, the pacing gets much better. In fact, it becomes one of the better-paced novellas I’ve read recently.

I adore the flavor of Moreno-Garcia’s setting, and her portrayal of magic as a draining force, demanding blood and youth, is solid. Her prose has clearly improved over the years, but even at this early date it was mostly serviceable. The story is a standard series of quests to obtain items to help Yalxi defeat Xellah and reclaim a sorcerous diamond. Nothing unique, but a solid, fun outing. And absolutely not worth $120.