Clara Benson, The Treasure at Poldarrow Point. Kindle. In the first two volumes of this series, its protagonist had an energetic idiot for a foil. This is no exception, but this time the energetic idiot is literally twelve years old, so she has some excuse for some of her less wise, plot-furthering behaviors. Whew.
Jedediah Berry, The Naming Song. Gorgeous. Not like anything else, a very verbal and yet very grounded fantasy. The ending was the perfect combination of surprising and inevitable, really liked this. I would say “more like this” but only in the most theoretical sense–this is not a book for a dozen sequels, this is a book for “yes, I really love singular books like this.”
Genoveva Dimova, Monstrous Nights. Discussed elsewhere.
Emran Iqbal El-Badawi, Queens and Prophets: How Arabian Noblewomen and Holy Men Shaped Paganism, Christianity, and Islam. Best book I’ve read so far about pre-Islamic history of the Arabian peninsula and adjacent areas, does a really solid job of indicating which groups controlled which regions when, situates Judaism and Christianity in their original geographic context. Really interesting stuff, only wish it was longer. Lots of historical figures I had never heard of or heard very little of, who turned out to be quite worth knowing.
Margaret Frazer, A Play of Dux Moraud, The Bastard’s Tale, and The Clerk’s Tale. Kindle. The second volume of the Player Joliffe series, and Frazer was having a great time with making the medieval plays relevant to the genre mystery; and then two more volumes of the Dame Frevisse series, very much in the “if you liked this here’s more” category. They’re not the most elevated mystery series ever, but they’re solidly doing what they do, and as you can see I am still on board for it.
Frances Hardinge, Island of Whispers. Lavishly illustrated and quite short, melancholy, a fantasy of life and death and the different (mostly non-romantic) ways people love each other.
Jo Harkin, The Pretender. Discussed elsewhere.
Nalo Hopkinson, Blackheart Man. A fantasy that handles its colonialist past a lot more explicitly–and relevantly to the plot–than we’re used to seeing, very Caribbean-inflected, very cool. The protagonist is kind of a jerk a lot of the time, but Hopkinson knows that, and portrayal is not endorsement.
Freya Marske, Swordcrossed. Some of you might want this for the duels, some for the gay sex. Me, I am in it for the wool merchants. MORE WOOL MERCHANTS. MERCHANT CULTURES OF ALL KINDS.
Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist. Reread. For a book club. I feel like the immediately post-Victorian nature of this book is what jumped out at me most this time. The Victorians were just yesterday, and you can tell, and in a fun way. I’ve been part of conversations about how fantasy would have been different if this rather than The Lord of the Rings had been its pattern text, but one of the things that jumped out at me about that this time is that it’s a fantasy where a parent is attempting to save their children. Very very different from the family structures in Tolkien.
Nemonte Nenquimo and Mitch Anderson, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People. I’ve read missionary narratives before, and this was very much structured exactly like them but with the opposite conclusion: here are some stories of when I was a small child, here’s what I knew about my world and my people, here’s when I learned from the missionaries about Jesus and the western world……and now, here’s why that was a terrible experience and my life path and activism is very different. The parallelism really struck me given the conclusions.
Megan E. O’Keefe, The Bound Worlds. The last in its trilogy, wherein everyone is generally horrible to everyone else but eventually pulls themselves together and figures their space fungus shit out. Definitely don’t read it if you haven’t been enjoying the first two, it is not an entry point.
Nadi Reed Perez, The Afterlife of Mal Caldera. An absolutely beautiful and sensitively handled book that I will be recommending to very few specific people, because what it is beautifully and sensitively handling includes a lot of material dealing with depression and suicidality. I loved the voice, I loved the whole thing, but–think very carefully whether you want something this intense.
Sarah Pinsker, Haunt Sweet Home. I have long had a theory that there’s a period of “omg, I will put this NEW SOCIAL THING in my SFF story as a novelty! Look how new!” before the genre settles into, “Yep, we sure do have that, anyway here’s an actual story.” Haunt Sweet Home is a marker that we’ve arrived at the maturity stage–or at least Sarah Pinsker has–regarding reality TV shows. They’re a thing that exists, and if you’re going to put one in the story you still need a story, and this has one. It’s not the most beautiful ghost story I read this month because The Afterlife of Mal Caldera exists, but it’s a lot less harrowing than that, and a lot more fun.
B. Pladek, Dry Land. For some reason I thought this was going to be a completely different genre of book, but it is gay WWI environmentalist fantasy. If you like the war poets, sad gay boys, and modern environmentalism, this might easily be your jam. It’s mostly melancholy throughout but with glimmers of hope in the mud.
Ruben Reyes, Jr., There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven. This is the sort of weird short story collection that genre science fiction/fantasy readers don’t always hear about, but you should, because the stories are just as speculative and alien and profoundly cool as anything labeled SFF. If not more so.
Asheesh Kapur Siddique, The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Consent, and the Making of the Early Modern British World. An interesting take on how British colonizers used recordkeeping and other knowledge management types differently in different colonies because of their varying assumptions and goals, very cool.
Dana Simpson, Unicorn Time Machine. The latest Phoebe and Her Unicorn collection, and it unexpectedly made me cry, because there are some things with Phoebe’s dad in it. To be clear, they are funny sweet things, not sad things…unless you had that kind of nerdy dad and you miss him….
Sam Kyung Yoo, Small Gods of Calamity. Urban fantasy with gods and spirits making a great deal of trouble, fun and will be on my Christmas-buys list for several people.