The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Something I think most of us can agree on: Kingfisher writes a solid horror. I feel like she's channeling some Koontz here. Got the doggo, got the sharp, everywoman voice, got friendship, some creepos, and some interesting baddies.

As a formula, it's pretty much perfect, standard, and comfortable.

And it's enjoyable for exactly that reason. Solid and stable.

What makes this one stand out is the Twisted Ones, themselves, of course. Very creepy, very adjacent to so many supernatural baddies, and delicious.

Recommended.

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Ghostsong by Pirateaba
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's always amazing to get into that zone where you've found a fantastic author who keeps pumping out absolutely addictive prose, but it's another to find text so LIKEABLE and CHARMING and, when the time is just right, HEARTWRENCHING and VIOLENT for all the right reasons.

Yeah, well, this is now on the same level for me as the author's other series, the Wandering Inn. Of course, that's not so hard, since the two share the same world, so many of the same characters, references, and especially the baddies.

Let me just say that the full world and all the wonderful people in it are on full display. That, while we have new foci in it, the full weight of all that came before is something very, very special.

I LOVE this world. I have a hard time thinking of worlds I love as much as this one. There are a few, of course, but this one is rapidly becoming a top five. I should note I've read a LOT of books. To make it this high is very high praise, indeed. Take that as you will.

That being said, HOLY SHIT WHAT JUST HAPPENED?

Those who are in the know, know, of course. Just wow.


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The Sirian Experiments by Doris Lessing
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very thoughtful, careful SF that drives an almost academical knife in the heart of colonialism--not from the pithy point of view of those who suffer from it, but from the viewpoint of an almost immortal ADMINISTRATOR of an empire who, at almost all times, thinks it's doing RIGHT.

Yikes.

The casual way the Sirian galactic empire performs all kinds of experiments, including large-scale social ones, on indigenous populations is at once a condemnation of how Africa was treated and a sneaky mirror to all of us who seek refuge in academics.

But more importantly, if you've been reading the Canopus in Argos series, it provides probably the best look at Canopus out of all three. It's certainly fascinating and scary all at once. And epic in scale, of course. We watch AGES of the Earth progress. Like it's nothing.

Fascinating book. A much deeper look at ourselves through an SF lens than most traditional SF stories. I call this a hardcore idea novel. Recommended.


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The Big Brewhaha: A Tavern-Building Cozy Fantasy LitRPG by JollyJupiter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Solid series so long as all you want is beer, beer trivia, dwarves and drinking contests, bad jokes, and some snacks to go with your beer.

It's easygoing. It's also delightful.

And leveling those skills along the way is also quite relaxing.

Sit down, pull up a chair, have a brew.


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All The Skills 5 by Honour Rae
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Was it just me, or did this feel way too short? Maybe it's just the way the plot snapped along and the stakes weren't too high and they were just hiding their extraordinary power for almost the entire book, making it mostly just humorous and fairly interesting.

So much so, it just flew by.

Of course, all this OP stuff comes with a cost if it's all on the side of the hero. Fortunately, it still got pulled off in this novel. I just felt too short.

I still love the premise and the payoff.

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Liminal States by Zack Parsons
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A truly ambitious SF.

A good third is very much a bona fide western during a huge portion of it, but wickedly perverse, full of revenge and death. And then another part was a world war novel, complete with spies and infiltration. And yet other parts spirit us to the modern world and beyond. But during it all, is the spaces in-between. And that is where the true oddity and story lay.

I don't feel up to spoiling it for you, but the core is fascinating and the characters (ongoing, transformed by their experiences) are more so.

It's an epic SF, spanning a great deal of time and space. Highly recommended, even if I don't feel comfortable spoiling it. It's an experience.


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Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 228, September 2025 by Neil Clarke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Abstraction is when I design giant death creatures and Attraction is when I do it for you" by Claire Jia-Wen -- (5*) Smart worldbuilding and sneaky characterizations. I thoroughly enjoyed this one.


"Wireworks" by Sheri Singerling - (3*) Psychoanalysis in a cyberpunk world. It's okay.


"Four People I Need You to Kill Before the Dance Begins" by Louis Inglis Hall -- (4*) I think I wanted to like this more than I did, with all the SFnal trappings of paper people, assassination, and frankly, just growing up. I suppose I wanted some kind of real twist.

"Aperture" by Alexander Jablokov -- (5*) Great stuff. The worldbuilding is dense, clever, and after a moment's reflection, funny. It's how to literally and figuratively make an icebreaker. Two thumbs up. :)

"The Fury of the Glowmen" by David McGillveray -- (4*) Definitely a mood piece for vengeance and fear of AIs. Still, fun for what it is.

"Five Impossible Things" by Koji A. Dae -- (3*) It feels like I see a lot of these kinds of virtual end-of-life care stories. I'm not sure how this one ranks up, but it's kinda pithy. In general, the Vir idea for it seems like a good thing, but I keep seeing stories trying to show it in a bad light. Is that so important?

"A World of Their Own" by Robert Falco -- (4*) Solid post-humanity story with mechanical animals living their lives. I always appreciate this kind of thing. :)


Definitely enjoyed "Aperture" and "Abstraction is when I design giant death creatures and Attraction is when I do it for you" the most, this month.


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Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I should learn to ignore blurbs on books. But I guess I had, because I just trusted Chuck to spin an interesting tale and he delivered, be it with meta-craziness or not.

In this case, there WAS some. Of course, when you're dealing with low probability events, a-la infinite improbability drive territory minus the comedy, things can get REALLY wonky.

Beyond that, this is a pretty cool mystery, too, shouldered by a solid character study and a seriously fucked up spike of luck.

Very interesting novel.

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The Hungry Gods by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Returning to the SFnal world of War Dogs, etc, Tchaikovsky pushes it forward much faster after Bees took over in the last book. Indeed, we head straight into GODS territory, with their old world in-fighting, their fundamental ideological antipathy, and their inherent disregard of actual reality.

Indeed, the whole novella reads perfectly as a critique of our own would-be gods right here on modern-day earth.

Ignore reality at your own expense.


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Roadtrip by Travis Bagwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is, if anything, superior to the first in the series. It has all of the National Lampoon's Vacation meets a slightly more hardcore Deadpool vibe--but best of all, it has DIFFERENT kinds of therapy!

(Therapy, as you know, can either range between wholesale slaughter of your victims, or taking gaslighting to previously ungodly heights.)

But best of all, there's not only meeting in-laws (all of whom would kill you) or taking over a financial empire (that's nothing but creditors) or coming out of the closet about your bromance to complete strangers and enemies, but there's a FULL ON WEDDING to plan for your bestie!

And all while, the poo-crete flows. As does the bullshit.

I have to admit I fell in love with this super dark comical LitRPG.

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Hollow by Travis Bagwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I may be becoming a bit mad, myself, but this book really grew on me. Like a tumor.

I mean, the first half felt more like a really tragic, sad fantasy story where we could expect this poor kid to get SOME kind of hand, but that ship has sailed by the time he jumps into the portal. Death dungeon with his bromance-partner the trash goblin and demon rat babies.

Oh, yeah. It quickly lost any semblance to a normal, healthy LitRPG at that point. When all his relationships are seen through blackmail and paranoia and co-dependency and the dark, dark, dark side of relationship therapy as expressed as going through full murder-hobo, literally swimming in a handcrafted pool of blood and viscera, you can say that "healthy" is a thing of the distant past.

It's also funny. It took a hot minute to get into the book, mind you, but by the end, I'm totally in the mood for more of this absolute gorepunk masquerading as a LitRPG.


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Black Ops by Craig Alanson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This merry band of pirates (monkeys) in a big, bad alien universe, does the Call of Duty thing all novel long.

Missions, impossible odds, but a super smart alien AI always gives these outgunned upstarts the edge.

I'd say I'm reading Halo, but... okay. Yeah. It's all familiar. Fortunately, it's still fun for exactly what it is.

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Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Robert Charles Wilson is a rare SF author. Never truly made it big, but his lit is almost universally good. This 2003 novel starts out character-focused, thriller-like, with the complications built-in to an isolated scientific community, locked in to a quarantine they couldn't understand--but the true SFnal aspects come from the truly alien speculations and the hard-SF core.

Sure, it's a novel about our psychology in the face of the other, but it's a GOOD one.

I miss careful, thoughtful SF novels like this. Ones that aren't all about identity, but awe and even the idea of transcendence, even in a minor way. Worth the read.


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Defiance of the Fall 15 by TheFirstDefier
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This series has gotten funky in a unique way. This particular volume is pretty skimpy on character and/or plot, but it MORE than makes up for it in wacky spiritual cultivation stakes, truly OP powerups and a uniquely ever-matching way to power-scale, and a particularly heavy lean into SF for what should ostensibly be an epic fantasy series.

It's not every day that you can have a dude with a sword take on gods, planets (even at full size), or whole dimensional realms. Or that it still remains fraught with close calls.

What this does well, it does very well. But there's absolutely nothing humble about it. lol


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A Brewtiful Life by JollyJupiter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So, while I have hardly any expectations except for a lot of beer, some partying, more beer, and some artisan dwarvish beer competitions, I have to admit that I'm quite satisfied with what I got.

After all, it's dwarves and beer, no huge quests or OP opponents, just the desire to show off l33t crafting skills and watch the hairy people get sloshed.

Fun. Simple. And, I have to admit... happy.

This is a good thing.


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Timeless by Travis Bagwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A bit better than the previous, but mostly because I'm a sucker for interesting timey-wimey stuff and this novel DID wrap up most of the BIG stuff.

Fairly amusing LitRPG. The best parts are always the necromancy goodies. Other than that, I have nothing much to say.


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The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso by Dante Alighieri
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Re-Read. I mean, of course, with all those things I've read, to neglect one of the most famous of famous epic poems would be an unforgivable sin. One worthy of being sent to hell for. So, obviously, I had to read it. And I took a guide, lost a guide, and wound up messing with the spheres of heaven by the end.

Because, why not?

Is it a thinly-veiled condemnation of Italian peers by way of historical personages? An allegory for the Tree of Life? A personal journey of transcendentalism? A roaring road-trip good-time?

Why not all these things?

Classics are classics for a reason. Some can be come at from any angle. Or angel. Whatever.

Good shit to revisit.



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Armageddon by Travis Bagwell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If not for the end and its battle and surprise addition, I probably would have been super annoyed at this book.

For one, there was an AWFUL lot of outside the game machinations and simply not enough liche goodness. Or overall craziness. Sure, it gets there eventually, but I just didn't find it all that interesting in such high doses.

And then Smiles and crew were OKAY for the most part, but I wanted to go back to OUR crew almost the entire time I was reading.

Am I grousing a bit? Maybe. Still, all's well that ends well--or cataclysmic--right?


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The Iliad by Homer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Frankly, if someone claims to know the classics but doesn't know either of Homer's classics of Western Tradition literature, then they've done themselves the greatest of all the great disservices.

That's a long winded way of saying they need to go off into the wine dark sea without a boat and pray that one of the gods will give them mercy--for the rest of us will not.

Rather, this is the definition of a true epic, with casual assumptions that the gods are always among us, cheering or booing in their sport of mankind. The original football game--lasting ten years and so much grief, the sacking of Troy has its heroes doing grand deeds on either side.

I've read this 5 times now. The first, I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of names, focusing on just those I could really sink my teeth into, picking up on the major plot advances, heroism, grief, and rage. Every time since, it's just a matter of adding more and more names, more context and, of course, the depth of time and interest.

It's gotten to the point where I can just play it all in my head like the best of all movies. All the blood and guts, all the emotion, and for the gods--this is obviously all just a huge case of sexual frustration spilling over into all the mortal world.

Damn it, Hera and Zeus!

And yet, so enjoyable. Brilliant, as always.

Everyone should devote a bit of time to this foundational piece of literature.


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Heretical Fishing 4 by Haylock Jobson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are two things this book does very well. OP power coupled to "love everyone" fishing energy and the pure fantasy wish of being surrounded by never ending friends, jokes, and mutual care.

Wait. Isn't this supposed to be a LitRPG with power progression and big battles, etc?

Yeah, it has all that, but mostly it's just fishing, boat building, giving an abyssal kraken a hug, and dealing with evil otters. Details.


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Trouble on Paradise by Craig Alanson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Honestly? It was an okay mil-SF from the PoV of those left behind on Paradise, but I found myself missing the old characters I'd grown to love in the main series more.

So, it's a miss for me, but only barely.


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The Odyssey by Homer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My umpteenth read. Hell, I don't even know how many times it's been now, but I can almost recite it verbatim.

That is to say, I really like it.

Indeed, with this particular version, with a couple of hours of commentary before the newly translated text, it is like coming home to a college course. And yes, that IS something I really like.

So, for all ya'll who like a grand adventure in the truly epic style, with the recounting of one of the world's oldest road-trip stories, look no further. And while the new movie isn't quite out yet, I should point out that the text will almost always be better than any adaptation. I'll die on the great man of Ithica's longbow if I lie.


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The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Re-read 9/1/25

This time-travel SF of mid-period Heinlein is goofy in a good way. It can be summed up in a sleep-till-mid-life, see you've been screwed, get glad-handed a way back in time, where you fix all the mess-ups without touching the original set-in-stone events. All details from early remain in the later.

It's fun. Even if the plot is handing this guy EVERY possibility on a silver platter, it's HEINLEIN. Lively voice, great dialogue, solid plot, and, as always, irascible.


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