Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab
I was a huge fan of V.E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (and much of her other work as well) and so was excited to see her new book, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, was seemingly a bit similar. Unfortunately, while the writing on a sentence level remains strong, and there’s a lot of strong elements, I ended up somewhat disappointed with the tale.
Last Sunday, AMC+ premiered its new action-fantasy show Nautilus. Purchased from Disney, the story is inspired by Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, as you could no doubt tell by the title. Roger Ebert.com liked it very much. Vulture liked it too, but they take a more analytical approach.
Nerds of a Feather reviews John Wiswell’s Heracles retelling, Wearing the Lion.
They also reviewed the fourth season of HBO’s True Detective, Night Country.
Hidden Truth (2002) is the second book in Dawn Cook’s TRUTH series. It picks up a few weeks after the events of First Truth (which you definitely need to read first) and mostly continues the same formula: a small cast, a secluded mountain setting, some very fuzzy magic, and — because it’s a YA story — the requisite love triangle.
I was hoping we’d finally get some new scenery in this novel, but nope — we’re still stuck in Bailic’s mountain hold.
Shield of Sparrows by Devney Perry
Shield of Sparrows came out this year, 2025, and is already in development as a feature film, so I guess Devney Perry, who sold about a million romance novels before this one, knows what she is doing. I’m exaggerating. It isn’t a million books, only fifty. This book is a romantasy—a romance novel set in a second world. It’s not my go-to genre, but I enjoy them now and then, and I would say this is my favorite romantasy so far.
Let me quickly run through the romantasy tropes you can expect here: enemies-to-lovers,
The Druid Stone by Simon Majors
“You can’t judge a book by its cover.” We’ve all heard the saying before and know it to be true. Not that I’m demeaning the work of all the wonderful cover artists out there. Indeed, a good book with a beautifully decorative cover illustration makes for a treasure in any home, to be sure, and I’m nerdy enough to have my own favorite artists of such: Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo, Richard M. Powers, Virgil Finlay, James Bama … the list goes on and on. All I’m saying is that it can be a risky proposition to purchase a book,
Where the Axe is Buried by Ray Nayler
Ray Nayler’s 2025 SF geopolitical spy-thriller novel, Where the Axe is Buried, explores totalitarian regimes and the role of AI in a dystopian near-future. The story moves among many characters; Lilia, a scientist; Palmer, her London boyfriend; Zoya, a famed activist in the repressive Federation, now living in exile; Nurlan, a government functionary who is deeply in love; Nikolai, the Federation president’s personal physician, and Krotov, the president’s head of security.
The Federation is ruled by one man,
The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older
Sometimes you just have to give in to the fact that a particular book, series, or author just isn’t for you. Sadly, I think I’ve reached that point after reading The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, the third book in Malka Older’s THE INVESTIGATIONS OF MOSSA AND PLEITI.
Though I’ve never really fallen hard for any of the first three works, I say “sadly” because I love the premise behind them.
Locus awards were announced last Saturday. Best Science Fiction Novel: The Man Who Saw Seconds, by Alesander Boldizar; Best Fantasy Novel: A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher; Best Horror Novel: Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle.
Surfing around, I found this piece of short fiction from Garth Nix from last month on Reactor.
They also feature an excerpt from The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst.
Canada’s Sunburst Award longlist is out.
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: A graphic novel adaptation by Manu Larcenet
In this column, I feature comic book reviews written by my students at Oxford College of Emory University. Oxford College is a small liberal arts school just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. I challenge students to read and interpret comics because I believe sequential art and visual literacy are essential parts of education at any level (see my Manifesto!). I post the best of my students’ reviews in this column. Today,
Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era by Adam Kotsko
Adam Kotsko’s, Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era — no surprise given the title — explores the “strange new worlds” of the Trek universe from Enterprise onward, managing to get about as fully up to date as one can with publication schedules, missing only the very recent Section 31 film (apparently to Kotsko’s great benefit). Aimed at the layperson despite its close readings of the shows and cultural criticism,
The Living Death and Drome by John Martin Leahy
The double-decker volume entitled The Living Death and Drome, from the Seattle-based imprint Sarnath Press, gathers together two novels from the weird-fiction author John Martin Leahy; the second of two volumes that Sarnath has recently issued focusing on this relatively unknown pulp writer. The entirety of Leahy’s fictive career was limited to just three novels and four short stories; that initial collection, Draconda and Others,
This Friday is 2025’s summer solstice. The Farmer’s Almanac provides some information on the event.
Last Saturday, people all over the USA participating in a protest event called No Kings. The Facebook page called Alt National Park Services tracked attendance and reports a final number of 13.1 million people.
The Guardian provides a Best Of round-up of new speculative novels. Esperance has caught my attention—although the horror of sleepless zombies is intriguing too.
I tried to say “femfanzines”
The Crimson Road by A.G. Slatter
The first A.G. Slatter book I’ve read, 2025’s The Crimson Road was a treat. Violet Zennor is a smart, witty, bitter young protagonist with an unusual upbringing, who reluctantly embarks on a quest she has no desire to undertake. The story is a vampire-themed fairy tale, filled with magic and danger. I wanted to know how Violet would fare against the dreaded vampire Leech Lords, who rule in the north. Violet has been trained to fight and kill, but she’ll need more than the arts of war to prevail against the being who has risen as their new leader.
Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World Through the Women Written Out of It by Emily Hauser
Emily Hauser is the author of THE GOLDEN APPLES TRILOGY, a retelling of several Greek myths. But in Penelope’s Bones, she puts her Classics/Ancient History scholarship to work in the service of non-fiction, using her own knowledge and a veritable mountain of cross-discipline evidence to re-examine the role of women in Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey,
First Truth (2002) is the first book in the TRUTH series, a young adult fantasy by Dawn Cook, who’s better known under her pen name Kim Harrison, author of a lot of urban fantasy and paranormal romance novels.
The story follows Alissa, whose mother throws her out when she begins showing signs of magic — something her (possibly dead) father always denied existed. Her mother tells Alissa to seek the Hold, a mysterious place where she might find answers.
The Tony Awards included some speculative plays this year.
Last Thursday was the anniversary of the drive-in movie theater. Here is a nice article about the first drive-in.
Two small-press bankruptcies made the news this week—bad news for writers and readers. Unbound and Albert Whitman and Co have both had financial troubles in the past, and both leave many writers unpaid.
Thanks to File 770 for the link to this long article discussing 100 years of film “stunts.” Some are way more dangerous and convoluted than mere “stunts;”
Utterly Dark and the Tides of Time by Philip Reeve
Utterly Dark and the Tides of Time (2023) is the third and final book in the UTTERLY DARK trilogy, and the reason I left it this long (I read the preceding books exactly one year ago) is simply because I didn’t want it to end. Once a Philip Reeve story is over, it can’t be read for the first time ever again, so you have to savour them while they last.
And in this case,
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
I use up all my superlatives whenever I review anything by Amal El-Mohtar, whose prose is always exquisite and imaginative, flowing like syrup. In the case of 2025’s The River Has Roots, the hardcopy version of El-Mohtar’s lovely, original fairy tale is enhanced by woodcut-style illustrations. The story is short, novella-length, and draws on familiar elements, but the themes of the river and music form the story’s main currents, which drew me in immediately.
Esther and Ysabel Hawthorn are sisters,
Draconda and Others by John Martin Leahy
For modern-day fans of the classic pulp magazine Weird Tales, few websites will be found that exceed the depth and breadth of the one created by Terence E. Hanley; namely, Tellers of Weird Tales. Encyclopedic in scope, the site is a virtual godsend for all lovers of the so-called “Unique Magazine.” In just the Weird Tales Authors section of the website, Hanley gives full biographies of (by my rough count) 460+ authors who contributed to the magazine during its first legendary incarnation (1923 – ’54),
The Afterlife Project by Tim Weed
The Afterlife Project by Tim Weed is a cli-lit book that follows two distinct storylines, one set in the not-too-distant future wracked by climate disaster and a “hyper-pandemic” and the other set 10,000 years later in a vibrant recovered world, one that may or may not have us humans around anymore. The two-track structure is appropriate, as I had two differing reactions to the book, finding the far-future section (mostly) quite strong while having a less favorable reaction to the near-future setting,
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
We’re in total agreement David!
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.