2026 read #41: All Systems Red by Martha Wells.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

143 pages

Published 2017

Read from August 16 to August 17

Rating: 3 out of 5

Eons ago, just three months into the life of this blog, I read one of the first books I truly didn’t like: The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells. That book’s puerile gargoyles smirked their way through interminable banter, every last one of them sounding like a YA protagonist with a chip on their shoulder, even the venerable elder. Whenever I’d see someone talking up Wells as an author, I just couldn’t understand it. Surely we couldn’t be reading the same books.

Then I got hooked on the Murderbot TV show last year. I’m an autist who has always felt awkward, uncomfortable, and unwelcome in basically all social situations; Murderbot was the genderless autistic binge-watching reluctant hero we all needed. I didn’t want to, but eventually admitted to myself I needed to give Martha Wells one more try.

Having such an engaging and well-done television adaptation already in my mind means All Systems Red doesn’t stand on its own. I can’t tell whether the show does the heavy lifting for an otherwise insubstantial novella (I’m already attached to the characters, which is good, because they’re pretty thinly sketched here), or whether the show is so faithful that this book reads like a 1980s novelization of itself. I’m inclined to think it’s the former; Wells’ narrative is more of an outline that the show helped fill in, especially with the human characters. The characters here have more than one character trait between them, though, so at least Systems is an improvement over The Cloud Roads.

I’m not here to give any kind of “real” review. I read books and I record them here, and the MLM scrapers are the only things that read what I write. So I’ll just give this a fond rating because of how much I liked the show, and leave it at that.

2026 read #35: The Dead Hours of Night by Lisa Tuttle.

The Dead Hours of Night: Stories by Lisa Tuttle

Introduction by Lisa Kröger

233 pages

Published 2021

Read from July 1 to July 10

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

I’m still trying to read short stories (whether in anthology, collection, or magazine form) at least every fifth book this year. Which really puts into relief how slow my reading pace has gotten of late. What do you mean the last short stories I read were back in May? What do you mean this is only the fifth book I’ve read in two months?

Anyway, I picked up Dead Hours pretty much randomly at the library way back in May (or was it April?). I’ve read just two of Tuttle’s stories before this: “Jamie’s Grave” (read and reviewed here) and “Where the Stones Grow” (read and reviewed here), the latter of which appears again in this volume. Still, the titles and range of publication dates in this collection seemed interesting enough.

—

“Objects in Dreams May Be Closer than They Appear” (2011). A weirdly old-fashioned story for its publication date. In its structure and rhythms, it brings to mind 1930s or ’40s short horror, despite its plot hinging on Google Street View and sat-nav. “Weirdly idyllic house that no one can find” feels like a plot straight out of that era, as well, as is the denouement. Still, it wasn’t a bad story.

“Closet Dreams” (2007). I remember reading stories from the 1980s horror boom and feeling scornful of “exploitative” pieces, stories from comfortable white male writers who used crimes against children for shock value. In the decades since, horror has become the genre for the oppressed and traumatized. This rumination on sexual violence and PTSD is thoughtful and feels far from exploitative.

“Born Dead” (2013). A stab at literalizing grief, but it’s too prim and managerial class for me, and I felt the ending didn’t land.

“Replacements” (1992). Obviously not every piece of feminist writing is going to be queer or inclusive — hell, this publication date puts it firmly in Second Gen territory — but this story is much too heterosexual and gender essentialist for my taste. Tuttle’s upper middle class professional milieu continues to alienate me, as well.

“A Birthday” (1993). Moderately enjoyable tale of a middle-aged woman’s “change of life.”

“My Pathology” (1998). A chilling examination of how men use women as objects of convenience, which sees an alchemist isolating and manipulating the narrator into growing and birthing the Philosopher’s Stone. Quite good.

“Food Man” (1994). Based on this collection so far, Tuttle’s bread and butter (pun intended) appears to be literalizing a social issue generally associated with women or girls, and seeing where it leads. This time the issue at hand is anorexia. I’m not sure that “a teen accidentally cures her anorexia by fucking a man made of the rotting food under her bed” is, perhaps, the most sensitive path Tuttle might have taken. All the same, I do think it holds up as a story, especially when contrasted against contemporary horror fiction. It certainly isn’t the most awkward social allegory I’ve read from the Nineties. Possibly my favorite entry here so far.

“Mr. Elphinstone’s Hands” (1990). In a change of pace, we switch from contemporary-set pieces to a tale of Spiritualism and PTSD in nineteenth century New England. It’s a fascinating allegory that uses ectoplasm as a proxy for revolting, nonconsensual male touch, and explores the lack of support from fellow women in a patriarchal society. It’s a bit long, but effective.

“The Dream Detective” (2013). Aside from some mild amusement at the noirish touches, this tale was an upper middle class shrug for me.

“Where the Stones Grow” (1980). I read and reviewed this one in Circles of Stone. There, I called it “ Well-written but just a tiny bit silly, as 1980s horror frequently was.”

“Vegetable Love” (2017). Another tale of vague heterosexual dissatisfaction leads to our protagonist turning into Japanese knotweed. More or less.

“The Book That Finds You” (2015). Finishing on a slightly livelier note, this is a rambling tale of books and fixations and the reputations of our literary heroes. It meanders without much emotional impact, but it was a fine enough read.

—

And that’s it! That’ll teach me to take a chance on a full collection from a writer I barely know. (I kid, I kid.) I didn’t dislike anything here, but so much of it puttered along in one gear and didn’t build to anything.

2026 read #32: She Would Be King by Wayétu Moore.

She Would Be King by Wayétu Moore
297 pages
Published 2018
Read from May 13 to June 15
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

This is the 1000th book I’ve read and reviewed on this blog. It’s taken thirteen and a half years to get here. Along the way, while I’ve reread books from my past, I haven’t read a single book twice. That’s a thousand different reads, good and bad, classic and contemporary, spanning centuries of literature and countless different versions of me. We’ve gone from the ineffectual center-right liberalism of Obama, when my kid was a toddler and groceries cost half what they do now, to the current spiral of fascism and ecological collapse and corporate inflation, with my kid now almost an adult. I’ve gone through a thousand iterations of self, as well—the person I was when I began is as far distant as my kid’s toddlerdom.

I first tried to read She Would Be King back in March 2019. After a promising start that year, my reading habits deteriorated quickly; this was one of several books I began with enthusiasm that spring, only for my attention span to atrophy. According to my ancient iPhone, I only read 14% of the file before lapsing. But this review of it has been stuck in my drafts for over seven years now. That was half the duration of this blog ago. This seems like an opportune time to blow the dust off King and try again.

It is an ambitious first novel, capital-L literature, dense and weighty. At her best, Moore refuses to sanitize or look away from horrors and griefs no words will ever fully encompass. Yet beauty mingles with the cruelty like blood and water.

The opening sections of the book function like novelettes introducing us to each of the three central characters. The stories are compelling, compressing generations of trauma into taut, moving narratives. It’s when the characters and their stories converge that King wobbles. Our three protagonists meet for approximately five minutes before plot contrivance forces them apart again. The structure of Moore’s examination of Liberian history requires them to part in order to witness different aspects of it, so off they must go to see it. But they keep thinking about each other, because the plot requires that too.

The second half of King occasionally still burns with vengeance, strives against the weight of trauma, and examines the injustices of colonialism, but the immediacy and intensity of its opening chapters gets lost in the business of nation-building. Liberia’s founding is especially nuanced, a colonialist adventure that opened a path forward for oppressed populations while also creating new conditions of oppression for displaced locals. Once her characters are placed where they need to be, Moore gestures toward some of this complexity and uneasiness, but none of it matches the powerful storytelling of the first half.

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!

—

“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 #9: Allosaurus in Wonderland by Jennifer Lee Rossman.

Allosaurus in Wonderland and Other Tales of Avalonia by Jennifer Lee Rossman

151 pages

Published 2025

Read from February 13 to February 15

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

I’ve been so excited to read this collection. I preordered it months ago, and have had my copy since November. But as so often happens with ADHD, I’ve had it all this time and just haven’t cracked it open until now.

Rossman is our finest contemporary author of dinosaur short fiction. (Michael Swanwick would be in the same conversation, except I don’t think he’s published any dinosaur stories in the last two decades.) I may be a little bit biased; after all, I put together the Mesozoic Reader anthology, and Rossman’s “Don’t Cry for Me Argentinosaurus” is one of my favorite stories from that book. Likewise, their “Joan of Archaeopteryx” is one of the only worthwhile entries of the otherwise disposable Apex: World of Dinosaurs anthology. Even if the stories are humorous, Rossman takes storytelling seriously, somehow turning punning titles and pop culture references into affecting, empowering fiction.

—

“Allosaurus in Wonderland” is as delightful an Alice pastiche as the title suggests, though it’s brief, mostly serving to introduce Avalonia, a realm where all periods of history and prehistory have mishmashed together thanks to random creatures (and little girls) who came stumbling through wormholes. There isn’t much to the story, but I enjoyed it.

“Baryonyx and Clyde” is the brilliant combination of dinosaurs and 1930s crime pulp that Katharine Metcalf Roof’s “A Million Years After” (reviewed here) teased but didn’t deliver. It even centers on purloining a dinosaur egg. Lindy and Campbell are time crooks, taking advantage of the Avalonian portals to loot old shops for antiques to sell in the future. I can’t say more without spoiling it, but I fucking loved this story.

“The Good, the Bad, and the Utahraptor” (original version published 2018) is the tale of Rosita, who longs to escape her dying little town and make it in a Wild West show. Her plan? Tame and ride one of the big raptors that have been killing cattle and depopulating Hell Creek. The story ends before achieving the emotional resonance of “Baryonyx,” but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

“A Tale of Two Citipati” extends Rosita’s story into the founding and naming of Avalonia, as misfits from Hell Creek cross over and meet, by chance, modern Ren Faire goers who hopped into a shimmery portal and got stuck. This is less of a standalone story than it is exposition for the setting as a whole, looping Lindy and Campbell back into the mix along with Rosita and Marcus from the Ren Faire, and setting in motion a generations-long conflict.

“Pirates of the Cambrian” sees Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan stranded on the wrong side of a wormhole, where they meet Anne Bonny and her pirate crew. With that setup, I had high expectations for this piece, but the brevity of all these stories works against it. I assume it’s here to set up later appearances from Earhart and Bonny.

“A Connecticut Yangchuanosaurus in King Arthur’s Court” likewise sees D.B. Cooper plummet through a wormhole in order to set up his presence in Camelops, medieval LARP kingdom and repressive regime. While I prefer more standalone stories, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with moving pieces into place.

Allosaurus is turning out to be something of a short novel told in vignettes rather than a conventional collection.

“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spinosaurus” introduces us to Enid, former knight of Camelops, who agrees to defect to New Hell Creek in hopes of someday liberating her home from its repression. The first half was quite strong, movingly depicting Enid and her life and her conflicted loyalties. I think the structure of this collection, each story more like a chapter than a standalone piece, makes the ending less satisfying, bending it into a preordained shape.

“Pterodactyl We Meet Again” has perhaps this collection’s most strained pun for its title. Fitting for the story that leans most into absurd humor. In a book crammed full of Jurassic Park franchise references, this story takes the extra step and brings us to “an island off the coast of Costa Rica,” where cryptid-sighting blogger (and bumbling goofus) Josh investigates reports of prehistoric creatures emerging from a wormhole. The humor gets laid on a bit thickly for my personal taste (there’s even the old chestnut about “the P is silent”), but I still had a good time.

“Joan of Archaeopteryx” (original version published 2021) was a bright spot in the bleak Apex: World of Dinosaurs anthology, and it more than holds its own here. It might be my favorite story in the book: a blend of comic and deeply personal, deeply moving but also a hell of a good time.

“Polter-Gastonia” shifts gears a little bit, bringing us back to the conventional world, where Rosalinda, descendant of the old Hell Creekers who stayed behind to guard the wormhole, has to get creative to defeat industrial development threatening the portal. Fun story!

“Don’t Cry for Me Argentinosaurus” (original version published 2021) is another one of my favorite stories here, and not just because I picked it for The Mesozoic Reader. It’s a fun wrinkle on the time portal formula: Veronica returns to the modern world after an extensive stay in Avalonia, only to be marketed as a pinup cavegirl. A sweet story of homesickness and feeling lost in time, and also about how capitalism destroys everything.

“Prehistoric in Pink” jumps us a few decades into the future, after the events of the previous story revealed the existence of Avalonia to the people of Earth. It is a world of discreet time tourism via stable wormholes, slightly reminiscent of Swanwick’s Bones of the Earth. The story itself is a teenage slice of life centering (naturally) on prom (and ecoterrorism). It also has the most audaciously bad dad-joke in the book. I quite liked it.

“Iguanodon Quixote” might be my favorite punning title of all time. The story itself is a courtroom scene interspersed with what led to the narrator participating in the act of ecoterrorism that delayed the industrial exploitation of Avalonia. A bit scattershot, but in the end, satisfying.

“Allosaurus through the Looking Glass” wraps things up by bringing back the narrator of the first “Allosaurus” story, older and wiser and more aware of the importance of stories, pulling threads together in the background of history, packing a lot of Whovian timeline manipulation into a tidy package. It was unexpectedly moving, a fitting culmination of this uneven but undeniably brilliant collection.

Undoubtedly the best dinosaur fiction book of this millennium.

2026 read #4: Wildwood by Colin Meloy.

Wildwood by Colin Meloy

Illustrated by Carson Ellis

544 pages

Published 2011

Read from January 10 to January 24

Rating: 3 out of 5

In the early years of this blog, I must have checked this book out of the library half a dozen times. I never did read it, though, put off by its ever-so-slightly-too-precious opening. After a while it slipped out of my mental must-read pile.

An odd pop culture conjunction brought it back to mind. In the Dropout comedy special Demi Adejuyigbe: Is Going to Do One (1) Backflip, there’s a bit where Adejuyigbe gets a staged phone call from a character who introduces himself: “It’s me! Colin Meloy! Lead singer of the Decemberists!” This bit became a vocal stim for my partner and me, a harmless bright spot during this dismal dystopian winter. It led to me getting back into the Decemberists, and it led to R purchasing and reading a copy of Wildwood. I’m reading it now on their recommendation.

First of all, it is really hard to read a heroic children’s adventure novel at a time when fascists openly wage civil war upon the decent folk of one’s country. I would read for a page or two, hit a wall of who cares about any of this right now, and go back to doomscrolling. Not a great mindset for a fair book review.

Secondly, either because of the book’s pacing or my own admittedly distracted reading, I felt it took a while for Wildwood to hit its stride. Again, maybe that’s my fault. I wanted it to be a “magic hidden in the heart of the city” urban fantasy, something along the lines of War for the Oaks or Wizard of the Pigeons, but from the pen that produced “The Mariner’s Revenge Song.” Instead, it’s a talking animal fable for precocious readers, with a pinch of Portlandia.

For a book called Wildwood, it has an unexpected amount of towns, gas lamps, mail trucks, and paddywagons. It isn’t until the halfway point that the setting comes into its own and begins to feel like a distinct addition to the atlas of fantastika: a charming melding of urban and bucolic, highwaymen and talking coyotes, ghostly bridges and rain forests. It’s in these details that Meloy’s storytelling genius shows through. That, and the indomitable power of people resisting evil overlords and secret police. Turns out there was a reason to care about this after all.

2025 read #80: Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones.

Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones

102 pages

Published 2017

Read October 29

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Writing a story, particularly a supernatural story laden with tragedy and the specific indignities of impoverished childhood, from a child’s point of view can go wrong in so many ways. It could be treacly, or patronizing, or heavy-handed.

This novella of a father’s ghost and the ripple effects it has on his family takes that risk, and crafts a stunning miniature masterpiece from it. Jones’s sharply observed prose catalogs the powerlessness and sympathetic magic of a marginalized childhood; the ghosts at its edges seem no less real, or unreal, than drifts of cigarette smoke in the car on the way to a clinic. Heartbreaking and superb.

2025 read #56: Circles of Stone: Weird Tales of Pagan Sites and Ancient Rites, edited by Katy Soar.

Circles of Stone: Weird Tales of Pagan Sites and Ancient Rites, edited by Katy Soar

238 pages

Published 2023

Read from August 24 to August 26

Rating: 3 out of 5

This is the first British Library Tales of the Weird anthology I’ve picked up since Polar Horrors last October. My partner R gifted me Circles of Stone during the holidays; I’ve intended to read it this whole time, even having it in my perennial to-read stack since December. But do you ever have books sit in your TBR pile so long that you start to feel avoidant of them? No? Just me?

Anyway, now that my teen is back with his other parent for the school year, I’m excited to get back into reading with more regularity. And Circles’ table of contents looks like it could be a lot of fun.

—

Extract from Ringstones by Sarban (1951). Excerpting this from a novella, editor Soar deploys it almost as an extension of her introduction, singling out a brief lecture from one character on the folkloric associations of standing stones. Well-written enough, but not really reviewable as a story.

“The Temple” by E. F. Benson (1924). This predictable but competent piece about two friends who rent a cottage near a ring of standing stones in Cornwall is invigorated by crisp prose and evocative descriptions. The ending is the weakest part. A solid start all the same. B-

“The Spirit of Stonehenge” by Jasper John (1930). Brief anecdote about a young archaeologist becoming possessed by the Druidic evil of Stonehenge. Painless, but not much to it. C

“The First Sheaf” by H. R. Wakefield (1940). Soar’s editorial introduction cites this tale of an isolated Essex village as “an early example of folk horror.” The inbred villagers here certainly return to propitiating the Old Gods in order to alleviate a drought the Christian God won’t break. The story is interesting as a prototype, but otherwise I found it middling. C

“The Tarn of Sacrifice” by Algernon Blackwood (1921). John Holt is a hiker on holiday, haunted by physical and emotional wounds from the War to End All Wars. Repulsed by modern man’s hypocrisy, and unable to shake the realization that he enjoyed killing on the battlefield, he finds himself drawn to the (imagined) manly simplicity and stoicism of the ancient pagan Romans. At the titular tarn, he meets a young woman and her father, who quickly convince him he’s the reincarnation of her lover from Roman times. Maybe it’s because I read this story perched on a rock shelf above a lake, but I quite enjoyed it. Reminded me of a gentrified take on Robert E. Howard’s masculinity-fetish tales. B

“The Shadow on the Moor” by Stuart Strauss (1928). This belongs in the category of “an amateur author lucked into a Weird Tales publication.” A dude trying to write horror stories at a Cornwall inn is chilled to see the shadow of a woman walking all alone on the midnight moors — no woman, just her shadow — and inevitably he must follow it to a sinister ring of stones. This is conveyed in correct but lifeless prose: “It was uncanny. Impossible. Yet his eyes told him that the impossible was fact.” The first dud of this collection, which is rather impressive for stories of this era. D

“Lisheen” by Frederick Cowles (1948). Another one not to my taste, affecting a faux-historical style that offers only the driest outline of a folk horror story. A girl is born of the devil (and/or Pan) in a Cornwall village; the vicar entrusted with her care soon loses his faith for lust of her. You could imagine a low budget 1970s flick built from that skeleton, full of latex and nudity, but the text at hand doesn’t amount to much. D?

“The Ceremony” by Arthur Machen (1897). An evocative vignette centering a stone still venerated in the wood. Brief but vivid. B-

“The Dark Land” by Mary Williams (1975). An unexpectedly late variation on the Edwardian formula of “narrator’s artist friends have an uncanny experience on the moors, here related at secondhand.” There’s potential here, but the narrative distance (and the primly Christian ending) works against it. C-

“The Man Who Could Talk with the Birds: A Tale Told by the Fireside” by J. H. Pearce (1893). Ah, the chokehold that phonetic dialect had on the nineteenth century. This brief number is related entirely in a roughly transcribed Cornish accent. It was fine otherwise, I suppose. C-

“The Stone that Liked Company” by A. L. Rowse (1945). Another tale told by fireside, this one is more substantial and interesting, with the dean of a college rambling out a yarn about an over-excitable young man fixating on a standing stone during a Cornwall rest-cure. A solid enough C+

“Minuke” by Nigel Kneale (1949). A house in a new ribbon development is afflicted with preternatural activity in an anecdote related by a letting agent. Nothing especially interesting in itself (was it supposed to feel more slapstick than scary?); nonetheless I enjoyed it as a glimpse of suburban history, something that seldom crops up in stories older than this. Maybe C

“New Corner” by L. T. C. Rolt (1937). One of the best qualities of this particular volume has been its diversity of subjects. Sure, there’s been a surfeit of Cornish standing stones luring the innocent to devilish doom, but there’s also been items like this one, which brings us to the world of 1930s auto racing. As a story, it doesn’t offer much, and at times feels patronizing in a boy’s-own magazine sort of way, but it’s a fascinating glimpse into a bygone subculture. C-?

“Where the Stones Grow” by Lisa Tuttle (1980). A thoroughly 1980s spin on the subject, in which a man wrestles with traumatic childhood memories of seeing his father crushed by standing stones. Well-written but just a tiny bit silly, as 1980s horror frequently was. C

“The Suppell Stone” by Elsa Wallace (2018). Well-written, as befits so recent a story, but disappointingly bland. I suppose I’ll give it a C

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And that’s it! The second half didn’t hit as well as the first, but overall, I’d say this was the most satisfying British Library Tales of the Weird volume I’ve read so far.

2025 read #55: Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire.

Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire

206 pages

Published 2019

Read from August 19 to August 24

Rating: 3 out of 5

After some standalone entries, McGuire’s fifth Wayward Children book continues the tale of Jack and Jill from Down Among the Sticks and Bones and Every Heart a Doorway.

It’s a bit of a step backward from the delicately crafted tragedy of In an Absent Dream. We’re back at the Home for Wayward Children, which means a crowd of YA protagonists squeezing into each scene to trade quippy dialogue and gum up the pacing. (There are three iterations of “You died!” / “I got better” punchlines.) Still, Down is an occasionally lovely book full of heart, compassion, and memorable imagery.

Reading a book from the first flush of contemporary queer liberation is a heavy reminder of how far backward we’ve slid in a mere six years. I miss the world of 2019, the impression that the arc of history would bend toward justice and freedom. I miss the way fantasy authors had begun to pepper their stories with progressive messages and wise asides. A perceptive line about how some would be eager to immiserate children in order to ensure the world never changes hits different now that such ghouls have gained control over so much of the world, and plan to entomb us all in a nightmare built from antebellum fantasies. 

2025 read #50: In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire.

In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire

204 pages

Published 2019

Read from June 11 to June 17

Rating: 4 out of 5

The last of McGuire’s Wayward Children series I read was Beneath the Sugar Sky, way back in 2018. Back then, I found the books solid but perhaps just a tiny bit unsatisfying. Enough years have passed that my reading tastes have shifted; is it time for a revisit?

Like Tori Bovalino’s Not Good for Maidens, Dream is a modern riff on Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market. Young Katherine Lundy loves books, rules, logic, and staying inconspicuous. When she happens upon a doorway to the strange and rule-ordered Market, where every exchange demands a “fair price,” she finds herself increasingly at home, even if accruing too much debt means turning into a bird.

The Wayward Children books (particularly the first one) fit within the 2010s fad for telling what happens to the heroes after the story ends. This comes through in Dream, with McGuire eliding through the big adventures against the Wasp Queen and the Bone Wraiths in favor of seeing the effect the trauma and loss have on young Lundy afterward.

Either this volume clicked with my current sensibilities, or I’ve simply become less nitpicky with middle age. From the standard fantasy trope of fair bargains, McGuire opens doors onto complicated questions of what we as people owe each other, what love and belonging can offer us, and the cost they extract.

2025 read #38: Shattered Spear by Otava Heikkilä.

Shattered Spear by Otava Heikkilä

55 pages

Published 2019

Read April 18

Rating: 4 out of 5

Back when I was lining up a future as an archaeologist, I planned to specialize in the Epipaleolithic and Neolithic in Southwest Asia. For a little while, at least, I lived and breathed the Natufian, the PPNA, and the PPNB. It’s a world that will always fascinate me.

This is a short standalone graphic novel that I learned about thanks to a sword & sorcery Discord server. It’s set in the Jordan River valley during Neolithic, and follows two women who encounter each other and form an attachment. The artwork is gorgeous, capturing the beauty and vastness of its setting as well as the character of its two leads. The storytelling is marvelously efficient, relating so much in such a brief space.

Absolutely worth a read.

2025 read #37: Children of the Whales: Volume 8 by Abi Umeda.

Children of the Whales: Volume 8 by Abi Umeda

Translated by JN Productions

194 pages

Published 2016 (English translation 2019)

Read from April 14 to April 15

Rating: 3 out of 5

Here we are at my library’s last volume of Children of the Whales. Mostly I’ve read this series to shamelessly bulk up my book numbers, which is something I had said I would avoid doing this year. Ah well. At least it’s been enjoyable, even if it didn’t grab me the way Delicious in Dungeon or Witch Hat Atelier did.

When Umeda’s writing hits, it’s stunning. Emotional vulnerability, the importance of community, sacrifice to preserve said community, guilt and absolution, all powerful themes.

But a lot of that graceful mood of grief gets lost under the weight of Umeda’s worldbuilding. I’m just not invested enough for flashbacks to two or three generations previously. And every volume introduces new terms and concepts. It gets to feel like noise after a while. (Though I’m sure a lot of my attitude is modern day anhedonia. I mean, just look outside. The monsters are winning.)

2025 read #36: Children of the Whales: Volume 7 by Abi Umeda.

Children of the Whales: Volume 7 by Abi Umeda

Translated by JN Productions

194 pages

Published 2016 (English translation 2018)

Read from April 12 to April 14

Rating: 3 out of 5

It’s difficult to write reviews of long-running manga when I read them back to back like this. I’m still interested enough to read through this series (or at least what my library has of it), but it’s starting to feel like background noise. (Most of that feeling is due to the state of my country, though, to be fair.)

This volume has a grab-bag quality. Each chapter is its own little standalone story, all of them contributing to an ever more elaborate tower of worldbuilding and backstory. Which is fine, I suppose, but it’s a lot of worldbuilding and backstory, so very much. The last chapter is a short story, published by itself years before, that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Children of the Whales aside from commentary on authoritarianism and Umeda’s fixation on jesters and large women.

In case you had any doubts about the series’ overarching point of view, we hop back to the original generation of exiles on Fálaina, who prove to be rebels against the totalitarian control of a government that sucks away its people’s emotions. Said government is the ancestor of the Apátheia pursuing the Mud Whale in the story’s present day.

Maybe that’s why I keep reading this series: it serves as a gentle, emotional refutation of the sociopathy of authoritarianism.

2025 read #35: Children of the Whales: Volume 6 by Abi Umeda.

Children of the Whales: Volume 6 by Abi Umeda

Translated by JN Productions

192 pages

Published 2015 (English translation 2018)

Read April 12

Rating: 3 out of 5

After it is revealed that the nous of the Mud Whale consumes the lifespans of the marked in order to sustain itself on the sand sea, the unmarked decide to maintain the secret and steer the island toward a distant land, where perhaps they can abandon the Whale and extend the lives of those touched by magic. Along the way, this volume proceeds as a series of self-contained chapters, exploring strange locales and incidents of the voyage. But discontent brews among other factions on the island.

I should take a moment to praise the sumptuously detailed artwork Umeda uses to portray the use of magic or the empathic visions her characters experience. It’s absolutely gorgeous.

2025 read #34: Children of the Whales: Volume 5 by Abi Umeda.

Children of the Whales: Volume 5 by Abi Umeda

Translated by JN Productions

194 pages

Published 2015 (English translation 2018)

Read from April 11 to April 12

Rating: 3 out of 5

After the bloodshed, grief, and pathos of Volume 4, Volume 5 opens with a wacky episode of comic relief, as Sir Rochalízo, the first non-hostile outsider the people of the Mud Whale have ever seen, happens to arrive at bath time, and the mayor greets him in the buff. It’s giving beach episode.

Rochalízo ends up being a colonial-minded dickhead. But his presence inadvertently creates a significant change for the inhabitants of Fálaina, as the Mud Whale reveals the ability to steer itself. We also learn why the Whale’s marked — the people able to use the magic called thymia— die so young.

After the chaotic action of the last installment, it was nice to have more of a low-stakes hangout vibe. I still don’t know how deep I will read into the series, but for now, it’s an enjoyable way to pad out my book numbers.

2025 read #33: Children of the Whales: Volume 4 by Abi Umeda.

Children of the Whales: Volume 4 by Abi Umeda

Translated by JN Productions

193 pages

Published 2015 (English translation 2018)

Read April 11

Rating: 3 out of 5

It’s been about a month since I read Volume 3. Clearly that was enough time to leave me almost entirely lost when I picked up this installment. Umeda swerves between perspectives in a bloody action sequence as the apátheia, or harlequin soldiers, continue to raid the Mud Whale. Exposition gets doled out mid-battle. It’s difficult to make sense of it all.

The main vibe is one of intense, sometimes melodramatic emotion. Pretty much every character either dies in horrific, pointless violence, or survives to weep about them in the aftermath. It makes sense thematically. The central conflict is between the residents of the Mud Whale, who are free to feel their emotions, and the emotionally-drained apátheia, who view them with mingled disdain and disgust. The heightened emotional stakes are thus central to the story being told.

One could read any number of allegorical interpretations into this; in the contemporary world, it’s tempting to see it as empathetic, compassionate people hounded to the ends of the earth by the sociopathic adherents of patriarchal capitalism.

I think I’ll enjoy this series more if I read them closer together, and can keep better track of who any of these people are. I have four more volumes checked out from the library that I’ll likely use to pad out my reading numbers for this month. After that, our library doesn’t stock any of them, and I’m not sure if I’ll continue the series. It’s long, much longer than any other manga I’ve read.

2025 read #25: Children of the Whales: Volume 3 by Abi Umeda.

Children of the Whales: Volume 3 by Abi Umeda

Translated by JN Productions

192 pages

Published 2014 (English translation published 2018)

Read March 14

Rating: 3 out of 5

Back at it again with Volume 3. (Hey, I checked out the first three tankōbon from my library, might as well speed right through them.) The Mud Whale safe for now from tampering, its residents spend this installment prepping and training against the return of the apátheia, or harlequin soldiers.

As so often seems to happen in these manga series (I’m looking at you, Frieren), Whales loosens up its tone and gravitas to indulge in more generic teen tropes, such as Lykos getting mobbed by some cool-girls we’ve never seen before in order to give her a makeover. It all absolutely makes sense in context, a sort of community bonding calm-before-the-storm to establish the characters and their home more fully.

All too soon comes the renewed attack from the enemy battleship Skyros. Much of this volume’s final third comprises battle sequences. Umeda’s artistic skill carries these sections. And of course the book ends in a cliffhanger, so I guess I’ll be off to the library at some point for the next few installments.

2025 read #24: Children of the Whales: Volume 2 by Abi Umeda.

Children of the Whales: Volume 2 by Abi Umeda

Translated by JN Productions

192 pages

Published 2014 (English translation published 2018)

Read March 14

Rating: 3 out of 5

Rolling right along into Volume 2. The first tankōbon ended with a sudden massacre at the hands of some sociopathic harlequin soldiers, which certainly is a vibe. The sentimental melancholy of the first couple chapters still shows through from time to time, especially in some lovely artwork in Chapter 7, “This World Is Beautiful Because…” However, much of this volume was action, as our heroes realize the elders would rather sink the Whale than face a return of the harlequins, and must gather allies and fight there way into the bowels of the island to stop the elders.

A theme has emerged of embracing and understanding one’s own emotions, in opposition to the emotionless husks warring across the outside world. This, plus the artwork, has kept me sufficiently interested to keep going.

2025 read #23: Children of the Whales: Volume 1 by Abi Umeda.

Children of the Whales: Volume 1 by Abi Umeda

Translated by JN Productions

193 pages

Published 2013 (English translation published 2017)

Read March 14

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Still struggling to find manga that fills the Delicious in Dungeon / Witch Hat Atelier-shaped absence in my life, I happened upon this series in my library’s collection, and decided to give it a try.

Teenage Chakuro is the archivist for the people of the Mud Whale. Their entire society of some five hundred people scrounges a living on the back of the floating (possibly living) city, drifting through a seemingly boundless sea of sand that swallows anything else on its surface. Chakuro and his fellow Marked — users of emotion-fueled magic — live brief lives, rarely living beyond 30. The longer-lived Unmarked, who cannot wield magic, comprise the society’s leaders despite being much fewer in number. But the elders know more than they let on about the world beyond the Whale.

The worldbuilding is complex, and the pacing feels a bit off as a result, though Umeda never lets the exposition completely overwhelm the story. A melancholy urgency, an awareness of short lives and sudden death, suffuses Chakuro’s narration. Umeda’s artwork is gorgeous, particularly the establishing shots of the Mud Whale and the larger world around it.

Whales is no replacement for Delicious or Atelier, but it’s intriguing enough as its own thing. 

2025 read #22: Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong.

Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong

89 pages

Published 2016

Read March 14

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

For someone who has published poetry and occasionally flirts with calling myself a poet, I’ve read embarrassingly little. I read a fair bit of verse online, in tiny press publications and on social media, but even there, I don’t read as much as I did back in ’21 or ’22.

Ocean Vuong is one of our major contemporary poets, and someone I’ve never read before. I picked this collection because it’s the one my library had. The topics here are those expected of major contemporary poets: grief, identity, violence, trauma, eroticism, the elemental vastness of one’s parents. I say this without disparagement; these are paramount matters, and Vuong handles them with skill. He raises an archetype without ever feeling anodyne: “He moves like any / other fracture, revealing the briefest doors.” (From “Trojan.”)