Honestly I thought I’d hit the peak weird of the Dune Saga with God Emperor of Dune and that the final two books would be dealing with the fallout while coming back down the mountain. But like a car salesman slapping the roof of an old jalopy, Heretics of Dune is where Frank Herbert confidently declares that there’s plenty of weird in this baby yet. Only, this time the series pivots...

I have really enjoyed J.D. Sanderson’s work in the past. If you haven’t already, you can check out my review for his twilight-zone inspired short story collection Around the Dark Dial here. I like it when sci-fi books teach me something new about science or astronomy (it’s not a requirement for me, but it’s nice when it happens) but I’ve never had that happen right on the title page before...

A dark, corporate dystopian sci-fi novella full of action and intrigue from Rohan O’Duill. I’d like to take a moment to praise the cover art for Cold Rising. It’s really well composed, and I love the use of Mars to replace the O in ‘Cold’. The cover is initially what attracted me to this, and as with all the ebooks on my Kindle, it’s been there a while and I definitely wish I had gotten to it...

I very much enjoyed J. Dianne Dotson’s space opera quadrilogy, The Questrison Saga, and so I’m at the point now where anything from this author is bound to pique my interest. The Inn at the Amethyst Lantern is a whimsical young adult lunarpunk adventure—a genre I have never read before, but I really dig the vibes. Think a civilisation that lives in dark forests or at night with plenty of...

By now you all know how much I enjoyed Witch in the Lighthouse, and so I jumped at the chance when author Azalea Forrest put out a call for ARC readers for its sequel, A Witch in Isenshire, a book which I had the privilege of helping to reveal the cover for recently. I’ve really come to enjoy cosy fantasy as a genre, and if you had told me this would be the case a few years ago...

Howl’s Moving Castle is one of my favourite Studio Ghibli movies (that’s not really saying a lot, because most of the movies in Studio Ghibli’s catalogue are my favourite movies lol!) But I was intrigued to read the original children’s fantasy novel by Diana Wynne Jones, and I was surprised to learn it’s only the first book in a whole trilogy. Let me just take a moment to praise the cover art…

There’s not enough mechs taking centre-stage in sci-fi books, and that’s a real shame because they’re awesome. I’ve gained a new appreciation for them since playing Armored Core VI last year, and I even watched some Gundam for the first time since then. Reality Check is all about mechs. A hotshot young Cyber Cycle racer turned mech pilot defending Earth against a hostile alien invasion. Great premise.

I received a free ARC of Out of Breath from the author in exchange for an honest review. I really enjoyed Carrion Crew. I thought the worldbuilding and setting was fantastic. You can read my thoughts on it here. I’ve been looking forward to reading more from that world, and so I was honoured when James reached out to offer an ARC for Out of Breath to review. So, let’s get to it.

This is one of those books that’s totally come out of left field. During the half term break, my family and I went on an outing to a National Trust property in Sevenoaks called Ightham Mote, a medieval moated manor house with sprawling gardens. As with many National Trust properties, Ightham Mote had a delightful little used bookshop, which I naturally perused. However, I found nothing I wanted in there. So where did I get RoboCop from?

I loved Children of Time. It became one of my favourite books, and it was the first time I’d read anything by Adrian Tchaikovsky. You can read what I had to say about it here. Children of Ruin, then, is the second book in Adrian’s trilogy, and it’s taken me far too long to get around to reading it!

I really enjoyed Gareth L. Powell’s Embers of War trilogy with its fantastic characters, sentient spaceships, and nightmarish aliens. Stars and Bones may be set in a completely different world, but it has all the hallmarks from Gareth’s previous trilogy. Plus a snarky talking cat! What’s not to love?

I knew the Dune saga started to get weird with Children of Dune, and I thought I was well prepared for the utter insanity of God Emperor of Dune, but I don’t think it’s possible to properly prepare yourself for it. You just have to dive right in. It’s so much weirder than you could possibly anticipate.

After having utterly devoured Dr Crunden’s SFINCS semi-finalist novella, Dust & Lightning, I knew I had to read more of her work. The Outlands Pentalogy is, as the name suggests, a completed series of five novels set in a post-apocalyptic, dystopian future. Normally, my sci-fi tastes lean more heavily towards the kind set in and around space, like the aforementioned novella, so I’m not remarkably well-read when it comes to post-apocalyptic or dystopian stories—Neuromancer excepted.

When I picked up Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky, I wasn’t expecting the tale to remind me of the Shadeward Saga. But with its high fantasy setting amid a hard sci-fi backdrop, I was pleasantly surprised. This was a pretty quick read for me and I’m finding that novellas give me a rather satisfying feeling of progress for a normally slow reader such as I am. The cover art for Elder Race is absolutely gorgeous and depicts the Tower featured within beautifully.

I hate that my first thought when reading this book was of James Cameron and his damnable smurfs. I hate the fact that I thought about those movies at all while reading Le Guin. It feels like a real disservice. Don’t get me wrong here, the Avatar movies are good fun, with great visuals and set pieces of course, and I thought the second one was better than the first. But let’s be honest, we don’t watch them for their poignancy.

A Necromancer Called Gam Gam is a semi-finalist in the first annual Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championship (SFINCS), and it’s been on my TBR for a little while. But, as a fellow SFINCTER (lol), I couldn’t help but be curious about some of the other books in the contest. So I moved this one up, and I have to say, as someone who lost a parent at a young age, it made me cry.

I didn’t expect to blast through Wishhobbler in a single day, but from the first page I was hooked. It’s weird, darkly funny and a little sinister. It certainly put me in mind of some of the books my eldest has been bringing home from school, and it has some really fantastic stylised illustrations throughout to match!

I thoroughly enjoyed my previous read by Azalea Forrest, Witch in the Lighthouse, but after reading A Bitter Drink, I think this one is my new favourite of the two. Less Ghibli, and dialing back on the coziness a little, to instead bring us great character work and higher stakes in an imaginative fantasy world. So, let’s have a deeper look.

This isn’t a first for me. I have fond memories of my dad reading The Hobbit to me as a bedtime story when I was a child, and it’s remarkable how much the book stuck with me over the years. Now I’m older and I have children of my own, it has given me a wonderful opportunity to read the book to them as well. Unfortunately, I didn’t own a copy of the book!

I’m pretty happy with the amount of books I managed to read and review this year! So many were indie books, too, which was my goal. All in all, I read and reviewed 25 books up to the time of writing this post. Whenever I review books, in addition to this blog, I usually post them to Goodreads and Amazon, as well as sharing the link to the review on Twitter, Threads, Bluesky, Facebook, and sometimes Instagram (if I remember).