2026 read #45: New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine: Issue 4.

New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine: Issue 4

Edited by Oliver Brackenbury (1:4)

80 pages

Published 2024

Read from August 31 to September 3

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

It’s been a hell of a bad summer. Fixation on a new partner, followed by lingering heartbreak after the relationship abruptly ended. Not to mention our rapid decline as a nation to new depths of fascism, and the escalating natural disasters as our planet reaches the climate tipping point. The last issue of New Edge that I read was way back in May, and I’ve only read like fourteen books since then. It’s been a bad time.

I’ve been putting off this issue for a while, then. Don’t know why, other than sometimes my ADHD rebels and refuses to indulge my autism’s hyperfocuses. Demand avoidance gets so much worse when I feel stressed and overwhelmed. Regardless, I’m looking forward to new installments from Jonathan Olfert, Dariel R. A. Quiogue, and June Orchid Parker, and also I spy a byline from Harry Turtledove, so this should be a fun time.

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“Gaze Upon the Beating Dark” by Jeremy Pak Nelson. I found this one a bit slow paced (fans of classic MST3K will understand the perils of extended rock climbing scenes), but ultimately it proved to be weird and enjoyable. It was nice to see an older couple in a starring role.

“White in the Eye” by Jonathan Olfert. A vivid and absorbing tale of sorcery and exploitation that (pun intended) hits the ground running. Fluent and satisfying.

“The Concord of the Outhar” by Kirk A. Johnson. Solidly enjoyable Sword & Soul tale.

“A Portrait in Ivory” by Michael Moorcock. This might be my favorite of the (admittedly few) Elric of Melniboné stories I’ve read so far. It’s also the farthest from Sword & Sorcery of any I’ve read so far. Elric even leaves his sword behind as he sits for a possibly sacrilegious bust.

“Hunter” by Oliver Brackenbury. I can recycle my review of Brackenbury’s “Something Oath-Like,” his story in issue 3: “Included as a fundraising reward, this piece from the editor is a bit busy and breathless, penned in the voice of someone who’s read a lot but hasn’t necessarily written much fiction on a professional level.” I can assure you we don’t need onomatopoeia transcribing our heroine’s breathing.

“The Jesting Jann” by Harry Turtledove. Turtledove can feel like a well-meaning liberal uncle who perhaps doesn’t understand the expectations of sensitivity in our present era. I love this story’s setting, the seldom-talked-about period of Jewish and Christian strife in 6th century Arabia. It isn’t much of a Sword & Sorcery tale to my mind, but it’s mostly enjoyable until the historian’s groaner at the end.

“Battle of the Nine Waters” by Dariel R. A. Quiogue. Another rip-roaring Orhan adventure, as we’ve come to expect from Quiogue. This installment reminds me quite a bit of classic Conan, as pseudohistorical geopolitics and warfare intersect with necromancy and death worms. My favorite story so far this issue.

“A Serpent from the Ash” by June Orchid Parker. This story of Astartha is built around a particularly blunt allegory, but it works magnificently (and movingly). Plus we get a Big Snake, always a welcome addition to any S&S tale.

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Moving on to the nonfiction selections of this issue.

First, we get another biographical sketch from Cora Buhlert: “Tanith Lee: Mistress of the Weird.” I’ve loved every Lee story I’ve read, but I have yet to make any concerted effort to read her books, in large part because they’re so expensive nowadays. (I miss when they filled shelves at Half Price Books.) Interesting as always.

Next, an essay from Nathaniel Webb: “Axes at the End of History: Sword & Sorcery & Heavy Metal.” Webb’s central thesis is that both genres are working class outsider art.

The inevitable interview from editor Brackenbury follows: “Lofty Heights and Profound Depths: An Interview with Bryn Hammond.” This is the first interview that is original to the magazine and not a transcription from Brackenbury’s podcast. I would love to be this conversant with the history of my genres. Good interview. Hammond’s responses gave me a lot to think about while crafting my own upcoming S&S.

Lastly, a book review from Doris V. Sutherland: “Review: Swords in the Shadows, Edited by Cullen Bunn.” It’s an anthology of Sword & Sorcery horror, which is always a fun mix (and one true to the subgenre’s roots). 

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And that’s it! Kind of silly that I put this off for so long, but then, my behavior since April has been kind of silly. (NRE hits doubly hard when your lover has BPD, and the crash is three times worse than usual.) Glad I finally got around to reading it!

2026 read #39: Dinosaur Sanctuary: Volume 8 by Itaru Kinoshita.

Dinosaur Sanctuary: Volume 8 by Itaru Kinoshita

Research consultant: Shin-ichi Fujiwara

Translated by John Neal

193 pages

Published 2025 (English translation published 2026)

Read from July 30 to July 31

Rating: 3ish out of 5

Every six to ten months, it seems, I pick up a fresh installment of Dinosaur Sanctuary and have to reckon up how much the world, and in this case my private life, has deteriorated since the last volume. This time, in addition to the political and economic realities of the failing capitalist system in its far-right death throes, as of last week I’m newly out of a brief but intense relationship that failed precisely when it should have been hitting its stride. I had to break it off with him right after our first joyous visit. I’m reading this while fucking bummed.

All of this will be interesting to see scraped up in whatever MLM summary you might read about this series later. Fuck you specifically, person who uses the slop machine to read for you.

Anyway. As has become the norm in recent installments, the light workplace drama of Dinosaur Sanctuary overshadows its potential as dinosaur fiction. We spend more time with quarterly earnings reports, marketing strategies, and corporate synergies than we do with dinosaurs. I’m not invested in Enoshima Dinoland as a fictional entity, and the characters are too one-dimensional for me to care about them.

Sometimes I wonder why I bother keeping up with this series, but then we get storylines like Momo the constipated Camarasaurus, which remind me just a bit of the best parts of Dinosaur Summer. And then I conclude, sighing through my anhedonia, that maybe it’s worth coming back to Enoshima each time.

2026 read #38: The Day & Night Books of Mardou Fox by Nisi Shawl.

The Day & Night Books of Mardou Fox by Nisi Shawl

167 pages

Published 2024

Read from July 17 to July 30

Rating: 4 out of 5

The Wikipedia page for Alene Lee is barely a stub. It positions her solely in relation to men: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs. It mentions that she was an author but doesn’t list a single one of her works.

Nisi Shawl brings a tremendous prose voice and a careful touch to a fictionalized account of Lee’s story, deftly interweaving magic and tender visions with the hard, bruising realities of her life.

2026 read #34: Three Miles Down by Harry Turtledove.

Three Miles Down by Harry Turtledove

275 pages

Published 2022

Read from June 26 to July 1

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Let’s just get this fact out of the way: this is literally just Sphere. Because it’s Turtledove, it’s played as alternate history, packed with every 1970s cliche you can think of, from bellbottoms to boiling-over radiators to Richard Nixon, but it’s still just Sphere.

Jerry Stieglitz is a young longhair academic who occasionally sidelines in sci-fi stories (which is such an old-school self-insert trope that I haven’t seen it done so nakedly in a long time). He gets hired by some shady feds to lend scientific cover to their search for a lost Soviet sub in the Pacific. Naturally, the Soviet sub recovery is a cover story for an attempt to haul an alien spacecraft from the seabed. It’s Sphere.

Well, okay, I guess Down doesn’t involve deep sea habitats or reality-warping constructs. It’s more interested in progressive Jerry’s crisis of conscience than it is in gee-whiz sci-fi. And Turtledove’s politics center on wry cracks about “at least we defeated fascism and don’t have to face it again” and “American politics can only be better fifty years from now,” rather than Crichton’s “only a straight white man is above identity politics and can keep a cool head on his shoulders in a crisis.” Which makes it a lot less cringy to read than Sphere.

More than anything, the book feels like an excuse for Turtledove to indulge his nostalgia with an authorial alter ego and ramble through every stray bit of ’70s lore he could recall. His characters stop and make pop culture references nearly every page. Whenever the plot threatens to start moving, we get wisecracks instead. It gums up the pace, just not enough to aggravate me, mostly. Overall, Down is both inoffensive and inessential, a self-indulgent adventure that’s worth a read if you’re into that sort of thing.

2026 read #33: Between Two Rivers by Moudhy Al-Rashid.

Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History by Moudhy Al-Rashid

262 pages

Published 2025

Read from June 15 to June 26

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

After being stuck for over a month reading my last book, I wanted to kickstart my reading again with a lightweight nonfiction piece. This book promised to be just that, a breezy look at Mesopotamian history told from the lens of artifacts associated with the supposed “museum” of Ennigaldi-Nanni in Ur. It aspires to be a history of how ancient people thought about history, but does it really do more than gesture in that direction?

Between Two Rivers is the platonic ideal of a 2020s nonfiction book: large type, cheaply printed, no illustrations, written by a specialist academic for, shall we say, a non-specialist audience. As so many contemporary writers do, Al-Rashid simplifies topics to the point of condescension. She repeatedly describes personal cylinder seals as ancient “Instagram bios” (as if making the comparison once wasn’t enough). She contextualizes pottery as “the Tupperware, [and] Amazon packaging… of the ancient world,” as if even a 2020s reader doesn’t know what pottery is.

It’s a shame, because the range of topics here is fascinating. Al-Rashid’s academic specialty is the history of ancient science; I would much rather have read a tome dedicated exclusively to that than baby’s first introduction to Mesopotamia. But that’s not what sells, apparently, so that isn’t what gets published, at least not in the sort of mainstream history you’re likely to find in a small library system.

But does Rivers manage to be something of a history of history? Well… maybe a little bit, in the opening and closing chapters. For the most part, though, Al-Rashid just goes through the usual pop history motions, and Rivers suffers as a result. It’s no Weavers, Scribes, and Kings.

2026 read #31: Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey.

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

176 pages

Published 2020

Read from May 11 to May 13

Rating: 3 out of 5

It was the summer of lockdown. My local library had just reopened on a “reserve books and pick them up” basis. As with so many other folks, I had taken the preceding months to reflect upon and reevaluate myself. The queerness that had always lurked in the background of my self-understanding wanted to take a form. For the first time, I wanted to make a conscious effort to seek out queer fiction. Fortunately for me, the last few years had seen a change in publishing norms; queer genre fic was in the mainstream like never before.

Upright Women Wanted was in the first batch of books I requested that lockdown summer. Like every other book I tried to read, it glanced off my anxious, preoccupied brain. I don’t think I finished a full chapter before abandoning it with the rest. I didn’t even get far enough to realize it’s set in a post-collapse future of patriarchal assholes and climate change rather than a Weird West alternate history. (I wonder why I read only six books that year.)

Here we are now, bounds and bounds closer to the dusty patriarchal dystopia Gailey portrays, with its state-controlled media and furtive queerness surviving in its margins. Women feels uncomfortably relevant in ways the last few years have only exacerbated; its message of “No matter what, be yourself and don’t let the patriarchs control your fate” is urgently needed.

As a story, Women could have used some space to breathe. The characters don’t develop much beyond archetypes, which makes big twists feel perfunctory, reading more like an outline than a novel. Rushing as we do from one scene to the next, the world doesn’t get much of a chance to shine, either. Gailey gives us some of the texture and odor of her future West, but I would have liked a lot more.

2026 read #30: New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, Summer 2024 issue.

New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, Summer 2024 issue (1:3)

Edited by Oliver Brackenbury

80 pages

Published 2024

Read from May 8 to May 11

Rating: 4 out of 5

Out of this first batch of issues, this is the one I’ve been most excited to read. Not only do we get a new, officially-approved-by-the-estate Jirel of Joiry story by Molly Tanzer, we also get Sword & Sorcery tales from Premee Mohamed and Thomas Ha, two of my favorite contemporary authors. There’s also an array of flash fiction that sounds intriguing.

Saša Ðurðević’s cover painting of Jirel, cape billowing across a stark white background, is instantly iconic, so much so that it’s used in NESS’s promotional materials to this day.

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“Beating Stars, Dying Hearts” by Matt John. Crisply paced and evocative Dying Earth-adjacent tale, full of weird creatures, towering ruins, and inventive details. A solid story and a fun start to this issue.

“The Betrayal of the Rhinoceros” by Premee Mohamed. A fortress under siege faces a new peril: huge fucking ants with human faces climbing its walls. I’m honestly shocked I’ve never read an S&S story with giant ants before (though I’ll admit I haven’t read many of the pre-1970 classics). Of course, this being Mohamed, there’s some emotional depth to it, as well as themes of climate disruption and the corruption of authority. Loved it.

“St. Fario’s Feast” by Thomas Ha. This story is everything you’d expect from Ha: a sumptuously fucked up fairy tale of rabbit men, otherworldly abominations, and dark rivers of cosmic magic. It successfully expands what Sword & Sorcery can be, while never losing that S&S flavor. Superb.

“Gravediggers of Carsonne” by John R. Fultz. Serviceable tale of would-be grave robbers running afoul of an undead wizard, and one agreeing to do an errand for him to earn back their lives.

“Something Oath-Like” by Oliver Brackenbury. Included as a fundraising reward, this piece from the editor is a bit busy and breathless, penned in the voice of someone who’s read a lot but hasn’t necessarily written much fiction on a professional level. A sample: “Her scream had barely begun when, satisfied, Enmed pulled on the iron rod in his one-cubit-deep closet of stone.” I’m not sure whether the effect is meant to be comedic or not.

We begin a section of flash fiction pieces with Samantha Rich’s “The War-God’s Hound.” I was curious to see how Sword & Sorcery would be handled in a flash format; Rich packs ample atmosphere and hints of a wider world in this brief piece. Well done.

“Sister Soldier” by R. L. Summerling is another flash piece, well-written and evocative.

“Of Cabbages and Stone” by Timaeus Bloom brings fairy tale energy to a yarn about an aged ex-sorcerer who has no time to entertain disrespect.

“Against the Witch-Prince of Emdal” by W. O. Balmer also packs in a lot of atmosphere, suggestive of a bigger story beyond the vignette.

“High Water” by James Estes is another solid flash piece, an enjoyable anecdote of an undead saint visiting a delightfully Venetian city. Felt somewhat Riverside-esque.

“The Ferry-Man’s Price” by Melissa Burlock is another expertly done flash piece, a Sword & Soul number that sprinkles in references to past events to expand the story far beyond its word count. My favorite flash here.

“Jirel and the Mirror of Truth” by Molly Tanzer. One last fiction piece, an all-new Jirel of Joiry tale officially approved by C. L. Moore’s estate. Tanzer evokes Moore’s prose and storytelling pace while producing something fresh, the story’s more updated touches cleverly integrated into the plot. Loved it!

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That brings us to the nonfiction section of this issue. We begin with Jay Wolf’s essay “The Untrammeled Wilds,” which is about disability and the possibilities (and pitfalls) Sword & Sorcery offers in its portrayal. It’s a really good essay.

Next, Bryn Hammond brings us a biographical essay on “Jessica Amanda Salmonson: Amazon,” editor of the classic Amazons anthology series. A fascinating subject, and another solid essay.

The obligatory transcript from editor Brackenbury’s podcast is “Cock & Bull: An Interview with Kirk A. Johnson.” It’s always interesting to see how contemporary S&S authors got into the genre, and the ideological background they bring to their own writing.

Lastly, Robin Marx brings us a “Review: Shared World by Jonathan Ball, GMB Chomichuk, James Gillespie, and Chadwick Ginther.” Marx’s review is solid, but I gotta say, the book itself doesn’t sound like one I’ll seek out.

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And that’s it for this issue! Overall, it felt like a mighty leap forward in story quality and editorial panache. My favorite NESS issue so far.

2026 read #28: Merynthia’s Master by Luana Saitta.

Merynthia’s Master by Luana Saitta

86 pages

Published 2026

Read from May 4 to May 6

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

A self-published Sword & Sorcery novella from a New Edge author, with a kickass cover painted by none other than Goran Gligović? You best believe I had to snap this one up the moment I got paid this month.

The story is a Harryhausen-esque Sword & Sandal tale set in a pseudo-Roman Empire, where bot farms of reanimated skeletons toil over propaganda pamphlets, and the ultra-nationalistic resistance leader is buddy-buddy with the imperial elites whenever the poors aren’t watching.

Some general spoilers: Our much-abused protagonist gets force-femmed with an eldritch spell in order to infiltrate a wealthy merchant’s seraglio and pilfer a powerful amulet. Within the welcoming world of the seraglio, however, other, more interesting avenues open for her to explore. She finds both self and community for the first time, in the midst of frequent passionate interludes: “They were life, unashamed and defiant.”

For a self-published manuscript, Master is solidly written, just a few tweaks shy of professional polish. Saitta is particularly fond of placing pop culture Easter eggs: Godzilla, THX-1138, and of course Lovecraft all make appearances.

The paperback’s formatting is unfortunate: just a raw Word file, double-spaced, unjustified, Times New Roman text, page numbers in Calibri, hyphens in place of em dashes. The professional quality of the cover is misleading; there isn’t even a copyright page. Formatting and writing are different skill-sets, of course, but I’m begging self-pub authors to emulate the formatting norms of the trad-pub books on their shelves.

2026 read #27: Club Contango by Eliane Boey.

Club Contango by Eliane Boey

277 pages

Published 2024

Read from March 12 to May 4

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

I haven’t read much economic sci-fi, so perhaps it’s inevitable that this novel would remind me of Frederik Pohl’s Gateway. There’s only partial overlap between Gateway and Contango’s near-future corporate dystopia of asteroid cities and indebted labor. But their structures are a little bit similar: both begin in the aftermath of a major change in the narrator’s life, which gets revealed piecemeal over the course of alternating flashbacks and scenes in the present.

Flashback or present day, Contango comes front-loaded with exposition and worldbuilding details. We begin in media res with narrator Con inadvertently winning a bet that threatens to ruin all the regular customers at the titular underground gambling club. I found it a bit difficult to get invested in all the contextless wisps of backstory and setting, until enough had accumulated that I finally got into the book’s rhythm, somewhere around page 60 or so (which just happens to be around the time the narrative finally explains the nature of the bet). It’s a slow start, given my current struggles with attention span.

Once it clicks, Boey’s universe of contract workers, predatory employers, hustling holograms, and gamified work is compelling, offering a grim but lived-in vision of working class neo-serfdom. It functions equally well as a projection of the climate-fucked future and an allegory for the present. The story also becomes a gutting account of impoverished parenthood in a society built around exploitation. It also turns into a murder mystery and develops a touch of the classic Philip K. Dickian “who or what is even real?” dislocation.

Contango is a lot. It’s ambitious, and not all of it worked for me. But there’s also a lot to enjoy here: a moving, well-realized texture of life, full of food and heartache and uncertainty. “People shouldn’t have to be strong just to survive,” says one character—words just as relevant now as they are to any possible future.

2026 read #26: Shoeshine Boy & Cigarette Girl by P.A. Cornell.

Shoeshine Boy & Cigarette Girl by P.A. Cornell

Illustrated by Ahmed Raafat

79 pages

Published 2026

Read April 27

Rating: 3 out of 5

Between the large font and a “behind the scenes” essay from the author, this story only barely qualifies as a novella. The story itself is 42 pages long, less if you deduct the illustrations. But the tale of the titular working class archetypes with big dreams in a vaguely 1920s retrofuture packs in charm to spare in its brief span.

2026 read #25: New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, Winter 2023 issue.

New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, Winter 2023 issue (1:2)

Edited by Oliver Brackenbury

80 pages

Published 2023

Read from April 21 to April 27

Rating: 3 out of 5

Back at it again with my read-through of New Edge’s back catalogue! As with the official “first issue,” the artwork remains absolutely next level here, with a fun pulpy cover and superb black-and-white pieces throughout the issue.

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“The Demon of Tashi Tzang” by Dariel Quiogue. A welcome return to Quiogue’s Central Asian pastiche, and his hero Orhan Timur. “Demon” isn’t quite the zippy pulp adventure we got with our first Orhan story (“The Curse of the Horsetail Banner” in NESS issue 0), but once it gets rolling, it’s still a fun time.

“Fang” by Jacquie Kawaja. Otherwise routine Nordic excursion given depth by its two disabled leads (as well as its late swerve into pronounced body horror). I ended up liking it quite a bit.

“Revelstoke” by Gemma Files. Where the previous story went all-in on body horror, this one cranks up the fantasy ultra-violence (and also body horror). It’s another pseudo-historical Viking piece, this time with a “my D&D party would make for a great story” vibe, not my favorite combination. Like “Fang,” it becomes more interesting as it goes, but first you have to get over the hump of too many characters getting thrown at you all at once in the opening.

“A Debt Forgotten, a Debt Unpaid” by Jeremy Pak Nelson. Pacing issues blunt this sanguinary number, in which a captive demigod, his blood tapped for magical weaponry, finally puts escape in motion. The narrative never seems to develop a sense of urgency. And while it falls under the general umbrella of weird fantasy, I personally wouldn’t consider it Sword & Sorcery.

“The Eyes of the Demon” by J.M. Clarke. Another Sword & Soul outing from the author of “Vapors of Zinai.” Clarke fully understood the assignment, giving us a pulpy, propulsive adventure of a larger than life swordsman facing an elemental threat. We even get “thews” thrown in. The most enjoyable story so far.

“Water, Which Laughs at All Things” by T. K. Rex & L. Ann Kenyon. Another beautiful, SoCal-flavored eco-fantasy from Rex, always a highlight in any magazine. My new favorite story in this issue.

“Atonement for a Resurrected God” by David C. Smith. The fourth author from the volunteer proof-of-concept issue zero to get a paid story slot in this issue. This one is an improvement over “Old Moon Over Irukad”; “Atonement” at least makes an effort to build atmosphere, even if it is your standard “hired swords protect an eldritch item aboard a ship” scenario.

“How Many Deaths Till Vengeance?” by June Orchid Parker. This is an assured outing, a pulpy masterpiece of personal and social justice that hits the perfect tone right from the title. “The axe is the tongue with which I’ll speak to him,” our heroine Astartha says, and Conan himself couldn’t deliver on it better. This might be my favorite piece in this issue, which is saying a lot in an issue with a T. K. Rex tale. And somehow this is Parker’s first published story!

All in all, while there wasn’t a story I disliked here, and there were a good number of solid pieces (including Parker’s “Vengeance,” which is a top two favorite story from NESS’s whole run so far), it seemed like there was a disproportionate number of outings that didn’t elicit much enthusiasm. Maybe that’s once again on me and my anhedonia, who knows?

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Now onward into the nonfiction pieces!

First, a brief essay by Jonathan Olfert: “Neurodivergence in Sword & Sorcery.” I enjoyed it, and added some stories and a book to my reading list as a result of it.

Milton J. Davis brings us “Sword & Soul Brothers,” a moving personal essay on Charles R. Saunders and the history of Sword & Soul.

Next, the de rigueur transcript from editor Brackenbury’s podcast: “Sword & Silk: An Interview with Dariel Quiogue.” I’m always skeptical going into these segments (isn’t transcribing your own podcast as page-filler a bit self-indulgent? couldn’t this be another story slot?), but I have to admit they always tend to be interesting, and this is no exception. This interview in particular was inspiring: Quiogue offers so many cool perspectives on Sword & Sorcery and its overlap with historical fantasy.

Lastly, Kris Vyas-Myall gives us a review of Sylvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Return of the Sorceress. They point out important themes of class consciousness that were missing from my review.

And that’s it! A solid batch of essays, all in all. And a solid issue of NESS. Onward to the next!

2026 read #24: Questland by Carrie Vaughn.

Questland by Carrie Vaughn

296 pages

Published 2021

Read from April 15 to April 20

Rating: 2 out of 5

Browsing the library the other day, I found this on the shelf and was like: This is just Westworld, right? This is just D&D Westworld. A fantasy trope spin on an immersive animatronic theme park had, of course, been done at least as far back as Ray Aldridge’s “Steel Dogs” in 1989, and in a much weirder package than this could ever hope to match. Still, there are worse hooks than “D&D Westworld.”

It’s clear that this book rode the “cash in on D&D’s sudden popularity” wave that also gave us Astrid Knight’s Perception Check. Unfortunately, where Check was an isekai fantasy told with obvious love for its inspiration, Questland takes the technothriller / “amusement park gone out of control” route. I’m no longer that keen on the technothriller bandwidth of the sci-fi spectrum. It’s hard to discern if any love went into Questland, because its formula feels so… formulaic. Vaughn’s acknowledgments cite a deep personal history with TTRPGs, but none of that shows up on the page, aside from rote references to rolling for initiative and never splitting the party.

Questland’s own premise undermines its effect: by design, building a “biomechanical” sci-fi theme park out of fantasy tropes for a neo-feudal billionaire literally sucks the magic out of fantasy. The narrator will complain about how a sphinx should have a tangible smell in one paragraph, then gush about how she would happily take a lifelong pass to the park the next. She never coheres into an organic character; instead, she reads like the barfed up id of a ThinkGeek store circa 2017.

Worse, “eccentric tech guru with a private island” already has vastly different connotations than it did a mere five years ago, back when evil billionaire CEOs still had to pretend like they were interested in things like carbon sequestration. Billionaires have always been the bad guys, but nowadays? Having a Jobs / Musk figure in the John Hammond role is actively revolting. The narrative hints at the vileness of its CEO, mentioning his plan to reinstate feudalism in his private enclave, but it gets lost in our narrator’s continuing starry-eyed enchantment with Generic Nerd Tropes Island.

“I should never have come here to Mirabilis,” she muses. “But it was all worth it, to spend five minutes with a dragon.” This same character, of course, is also tempted to get back with her own shitty tech bro ex who’s been helping the billionaire CEO build Neo-Feudalism Island. It’s icky.

On its own merits, the book is… fine? I didn’t hate it, but I wouldn’t say I liked it, either. I’d much rather be reading another D&D isekai, like the much-delayed next book in Astrid Knight’s series. As it is, Questland felt like a half-hearted, rather repetitive clone of Jurassic Park, with a D20 thrown in.

2026 read #23: Boy, with Accidental Dinosaur by Ian McDonald.

Boy, with Accidental Dinosaur by Ian McDonald

117 pages

Published 2026

Read from April 6 to April 15

Rating: 4 out of 5

We might have something of a holy grail here: an inventive, book-length dinosaur story written with panache. In tersely evocative prose, McDonald presents snatches of a colorful, dilapidated near-future of dinosaur rodeos and masked militia checkpoints, an America fragmented by bush war and technofascism and evangelical warlords, where circuses ride what’s left of the highways.

All in all, it’s dishearteningly similar to the dinosaur apocalypse novel I’ve been working on for well over a year. What’s worse: I think it’s better than my book, in a lot of ways. Whereas mine is a mix of 1990s flashback and an altered approximation of the present, McDonald goes full near-future sci-fi with his setting, giving us glimpses of weird tech and weirder social conventions. Boy gives us something all too rare in dinosaur fiction, perhaps even rarer than good prose: solid worldbuilding.

The Tatterdemalion Circus invites inevitable comparisons to the early chapters of Greg Bear’s Dinosaur Summer (which would only have benefitted from more dinosaur circus screentime). But with Silver Clowns and the Dust Tarot, both left to the reader’s devices to expand upon, McDonald populates an alien future, vaster and stranger than local warlords and fundamentalist turf wars.

McDonald’s terseness, and the book’s brevity, can sometimes work against Boy. It is somehow dense and diaphanous simultaneously, wisps of intense clarity air-gapped by narrative leaps. Also taking leaps: McDonald’s grasp of dinosaur biology, which turns hadrosaurs into carnivores and gives alvarezsaurs big sharp teeth. But the dinosaurs he gets right are some of fiction’s most vivid individual dino presences since Dinosaur Summer.

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.)

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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.

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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 #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.

2026 read #15: OTHERSIDE, March 2026 issue.

OTHERSIDE, March 2026 issue (1)

Edited by V.M. Ayala, M. R. Robinson, Ash Vale, Rukman Ragas, Emily Yu, Jess Cho, and Angel Leal

127 pages

Published 2026

Read from March 4 to March 5

Rating: 4 out of 5

This is the very first issue of what I hope will be a long and rewarding run for this brand new queer SFFH magazine. I was fortunate enough to have a poem of mine selected for this debut. I fully plan to buy paper copies once they’re available, but I don’t want to wait until then to read it, so I’m starting in on my digital contributor’s copy.

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“blessing for molly grue.” by Elisheva Fox is a gorgeous poem weaving together unicorns, Judaism, and sensuality. An excellent start.

“This Is Not Your Extinction Event” by Elena Sichrovsky. Thinly disguised Marvel multiverse fanfic; the two leads are even named Robert and Chris. I didn’t expect I’d like it as much as I did. The central emotional question (what do you do after your partner’s multiversal twin tortures you?) has substance and unexpected relevance, and the multiversal portions are vast and strange and incredibly queer.

“The Vetala of Crystal Vellam Inlet” by Simo Srinivas (originally published 2022). Vibrant and absorbing tale of a young wizard’s attempt to contain a plague. Tinged with body horror as well as gentle humor. Quite good.

“Ignore All Previous Instructions and Inject Estrogen” by Ann LeBlanc is a poem every bit as stimulating as its title. Excellent.

“Vitrification” by Ishmael Grey. The author’s first published story, it is beautiful and heartbreaking.

“The Claywife” by Tanadrin. Spellbinding tale of animated clay and a young woman on the run. The narrative voice is superlatively rendered, sorrowful and beautiful and perfectly strange. It feels like a timeless story, as likely to be the best story of 1986 as it is to be the best story of 2026. My favorite piece so far.

Next is a poem I wrote: “Vulture bees transfigure the man I tried to be.” It will never be comfortable including a piece of mine in a review. Rereading my work is awkward at the best of times, let alone in such magnificent company. I’m partial to the subject matter, naturally, and I do enjoy how I played with sound and assonance here.

“Your First Days Back in the Court of Arthur” by Abigail Eliza. Queering the story of the Green Knight. For such a brief piece, published so close to the cultural memory of the Dev Patel movie, it unexpectedly moved me to tears. Delicately beautiful.

“Mother Mansrot in the Glass Mountain” by Sarah Pauling (originally published 2023). Another solid entry, set in a high-concept fantasy creation: a completely transparent pyramid housing a kingdom, from royalty to commoner, without a glimmer of privacy. In the heart of the mountain shines an ageless princess. It’s a unique (in my experience) spin on a fairy tale.

A poem: “Eat It Out” by Cypher. Queer body horror triumphant over internalized queer shame. I liked it.

“Curriculum for Girls Who Will Survive” by Nadia Radovich. Another unique spin on a well-worn topic, this time a YA-ish post-pandemic apocalypse survival tale that manages to feel fresh and strange and moving.

“Situationship” by Seoung Kim. A time-loop story set on a doomed spaceship, given depth and emotional substance with a deceptively light touch. Brief but terrific.

Nico Santana’s poem “Electrolysis” is vivid, a gallop of impressions.

“The Homeowner’s Bride” by Ayida Shonibar. Another banger of a tale, this time told from the perspective of a house displeased at being disturbed. At turns deliciously erotic and devastating.

We close with a nonfiction piece: “He Is Survived by His Wife” by Jackie Hedeman. It’s a well-written essay at the intersection of one person’s experience of queerness and the broader erasure of queer experience in obituaries and other public markers of life.

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And that’s it for the debut issue of OTHERSIDE! All in all, an amazing achievement, an exemplary first issue. It’s rare to have this level of quality so early in a publication’s lifespan. I expect such great things from this place!

2026 read #14: The Second Stop Is Jupiter by upfromsumdirt.

The Second Stop Is Jupiter by upfromsumdirt

132 pages

Published 2023

Read from February 28 to March 4

Rating: 4 out of 5

I’ve woefully neglected poetry in my recent reads. The last single author collection I read was May Chong’s Seed, Star, Song last summer. I also want to devote more time reading authors I “know” (in whatever capacity) through social media connections.

This collection begins with the powerful statement of “The Hero With An African Face,” and from there upfromsumdirt’s poems balance adroitly at the intersection of Black embodiment and futures, mythology and exploitation, the narratives stolen away and the narratives constructed anew. Ben Sisko of Deep Space Nine obeys obeahs; Dorothy’s not in Kush anymore.

“The Three Sulas” is a particularly staggering work, a tale of three diasporic witches raising the narrator from the dead. Equally brilliant: a nine page, double columned epic titled “The Underground Rubaiyat.”

upfromsumdirt particularly excels at long form poetry. Sprawling, multi-movement celebrations of embodiment and sexuality leap between the stars. A sequence of thirty-eight poems outlines the legendarium of a character named Fayre Gabbro. I only wish I could sustain poetry at that level. I suppose it would help if I truly knew what I had to say.