Gav Reads

A Web Log of Reading

  • Sunday Summary: 28th Sept 25 Edition

    Womble from Runalong The Shelves has been doing a “Wombling Along” post for the last few weeks, highlighting reviews and other articles that caught their attention over the past week.

    This is mostly going to be about books and book-ish things that have come to my attention — and possibly serve as my own public bookmarking system.

    Let’s start with this stack of… I’m genuinely not sure what to call it… books?

    A stack of books that contains: 1. Direct Descendant – Tanya Huff 2. Valid – Chris Bergeron 3. Seascape – Benjamin Wood 4. The Undead Complex – Courtney Smyth 5. The Two Lies of Faven Sythe – Megan E. O’Keefe 6. Of Monsters and Mainframes – Barbara Truelove 7. The Incandescent – Emily Tesh 8. Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil – Oliver Darkshire 9. A Song of Legends Lost – M.H. Ayinde 10. A Granite Silence – Nina Allan 11. Hammajang Luck – Makana Yamamoto 12. The Starving Saints – Caitlin Starling 13. Zofia Nowak’s Book of Superhero Detecting – Piotr Cieplak 14. The Listeners – Maggie Stiefvater

    It was inspired by Roseanna Pendlebury

    Thinking about the things I would love to have read by the end of the year, and pulling together a few piles to drawn from as an aspirational to do list.I will not read all of these. I mean, I possibly theoretically could. But I doubt it. They're just the ones I really want to get in, if I can.

    — Roseanna Pendlebury (@chloroformtea.bsky.social) 2025-09-22T12:44:56.787Z

    and then Niall Harrison

    Right then, excluding review copies, here's my pile of aspiration/despair.

    — Niall Harrison (@niallharrison.bsky.social) 2025-09-22T18:31:44.781Z

    I badged mine as “the stack of books it would be nice to have read by the end of the year.” I added three caveats:

    But since I’ve made the pile with the intention of prompting myself to read them, I’ve started with The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater. One chapter in, I’m intrigued—but also wondering why I haven’t heard much about it from others.

    I haven’t reviewed my recent reads:

    • The Last Hour Between Worlds (The Echo Archives #1) by Melissa Caruso [2024]
    • Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries #2) by Martha Wells [2017]
    • The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association by Caitlin Rozakis [2025]

    If I get the time, a joint review of The Last Hour Between Worlds and The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association might be fun. Both are excellent, and both explore parenting in a fantasy setting—though in very different ways. Each had great twists and turns, and both had me emotionally gripped. I highly recommend them.

    And if you’re looking for something cosy in an SF setting, The Murderbot Diaries is turning into just that. Nice to see that Martha Wells has the adventures of Murderbot well under control.

    It’s October this week. The clock is ticking to get my reading in before the World Fantasy Convention 2025 announces the various award winners. I’m seriously going to need to weave in some novellas alongside the anthologies.

    The issue I’m having with Heartwood is that all the stories centre on the mythos at the heart of the wood—and speeding through them would do them a disservice.

    I’m sure I’ll figure something out.

    The dive into my BookTok bookmarks is going to have to wait until next week.

    This week’s Wombling along contains:

    • A review of Network Effect by Martha Wells, which I’m going to avoid until I’ve got to it myself.
    • A takedown of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand. I read the last paragraph, as I still hope to finish The Stand and then read the anthology.
    • More praise for Uncertain Sons and Other Stories by Thomas Ha
    • An older, very serious discussion on the absolute canon to read
    • And so much more!

    Next week, I may wade into “what’s a reviewer for?”—as that was today’s hot topic on Bluesky.

    Until then, Happy Reading!

  • Sunday Summary: 21st Sept 25 Edition

    Womble from Runalong The Shelves has been doing a “Wombling Along” post for the last few weeks, highlighting reviews and other articles that caught their attention over the past week.

    This is mostly going to be about books and book-ish things that have come to my attention — and possibly serve as my own public bookmarking system.

    Happy Sunday everyone, I hope you’ve managed to get some reading done this week.

    I kind of did—and kind of didn’t.

    I finished the excellent The Last Hour Between Worlds (The Echo Archives #1) by Melissa Caruso. It sets itself up perfectly for a sequel and absolutely delivered on what I was hoping for. But it also got me thinking about the formula it used to get there.

    That’s definitely more of a me problem than a book problem. Maybe writing a review will help get my thoughts in order. I am going to read the sequel, The Last Soul Among Wolves, at some point in the future—by which I mean, when the paperback drops.

    I got some train time this week and made more inroads into The Devils and I’m up 6% from last week’s update.

    I also picked up Artificial Condition by Martha Wells as my paperback, and I’m enjoying the cosy nature of it.

    As a reminder to me, The Murderbot Diaries chronology is:

    • “Compulsory”
    • All Systems Red [I’ve read this]
    • Artificial Condition
    • Rogue Protocol
    • Exit Strategy
    • “Rapport”
    • “Home”
    • Fugitive Telemetry
    • Network Effect
    • System Collapse

    I’ve just started Heartwood: A Mythago Wood Anthology but from what I’ve read so far the authors are embracing the spirit of the original but putting on their own twists. The bar is now high for the rest of the anthology.

    Did you know that Bluesky now has bookmarks?

    I just counted—I’ve collected 62 in the last two weeks!

    I’m trying to be better about revisiting the bookmarks I’ve saved, periodically going through them and actually using them for their intended purpose: reminding me to check something later.

    Reactor has an article on All the New Horror, Romantasy, and Other SFF Crossover Books Arriving in September 2025, and here are a few that stood out to me:

    1. Moonflow — Bitter Karella (Run For It) *
    2. The Haunting of William Thorn — Ben Alderson (Angry Robot)*
    3. House of Idyll — Delilah S. Dawson (Titan)
    4. Play Nice — Rachel Harrison (TItan)*
    5. The Macabre — Kosoko Jackson (Harper Voyager)
    6. You Weren’t Meant to Be Human — Andrew Joseph White (Daphne Press)
    7. Exiles — Mason Coile, Andrew Pyper (Baskerville)
    8. Veil — Jonathan Janz (Blackstone)
    9. Spread Me — Sarah Gailey (Nightfire) *
    10. Midnight Timetable — Bora Chung, tr. Anton Hur (Dialogue Books)
    11. What Stalks the Deep (Sworn Soldier #3) — T. Kingfisher (Titan) *
    12. The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre — Philip Fracassi (Run for It)

    Apart from the ones marked with a *, I think the rest will have to wait until I get my physical TBR under control… though, by my calculations, I may need to shorten the time it takes me to finish a book from my current 16-day average to… something a lot shorter.

    I do and I don’t like a stat. Added more books to @thestorygraph—my physical TBR is now over 400. Maybe I’ll just do the ’25 releases? Only 48! If I read one every 2.5 days and never sleep again, I could do it? Any bets on me crying on New Year’s Eve, still buried in unread books?

    — @gavreads (@gavreads.co.uk) 2025-09-20T11:57:57.293Z

    The author & editor, Trip Galey, shared a link to his appearence on the Trope-ology Podcast:

    I stopped by the Trope-ology Podcast with @themythofchris.bsky.social to natter on about Goblin Markets! Have a listen if you fancy!Available in the usual places!open.spotify.com/episode/1cfs…

    — Trip Galey (@trip.bsky.social) 2025-09-14T08:01:28.453Z

    And Simon of Savidge Reads, shared his September Reading Horizons:

    #booksky let’s chat about what we’ve all read, are reading and what we may well read next over hereyoutu.be/u_Rg-FvETLk

    — Simon Savidge (@savidgereads.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T17:43:57.242Z

    SciFiScavenger has asked a great question about rereading:

    I was asked earlier how many books I re-read. Answer not v many, much as I'd like to, I have too much exploring to do, too many other books on my shelves, even more not yet acquired. I worked out that my re-read rate this year so far is around 3%.🪐📚 #scifbooks #sciencefiction

    — SciFiScavenger (@scifiscavenger.bsky.social) 2025-09-19T13:53:24.101Z

    My answer was:

    I’m at 10% for the year. I re-read two books from the Rivers of London series. I’d love to revisit a few more—there are always plans to do so—but I’ve never made the time.

    Finally, I want to share Niall’s stack of books:

    And here it is with some other recent acquisitions

    — Niall Harrison (@niallharrison.bsky.social) 2025-09-20T09:24:41.441Z

    He always gives me book envy—his picks are often ones I’d never have considered on my own.

    Next week, I’ll talk about my TikTok Bookmarks, which currently stands at 236…

    This week’s Wombing Along is here and is a A lovely write-up of their week which includes: A reminder of The Scour by Richard Swan (a prequel novella) Writing The Magic hasn’t been dispatched yet Slow Gods is one to look forward to And an answer to Why Anthologies? Plus lots of other temptations and insights.

    This week’s Wombing Along is here—a lovely write-up of their week, which includes:

    • A reminder about The Scour by Richard Swan (a prequel novella to An Empire of the Wolf )
    • News that Writing The Magic hasn’t been dispatched yet
    • Slow Gods is one to look forward to
    • An answer to “Why Anthologies?”
    • Plus lots of other temptations and insights

    Until next week—happy reading!

  • Sunday Summary: 14th Sept 25 Edition

    Womble from Runalong The Shelves has been doing a “Wombling Along” post for the last few weeks, highlighting reviews and other articles that caught their attention over the past week.

    And I thought I’d join in.

    I’m curious about a few things:

    • Whether I’ll be able to keep it up.
    • What looking back on these posts will feel like in a year or two.

    This is mostly going to be about books and book-ish things that have come to my attention — and possibly serve as my own public bookmarking system.

    Let’s start with a recommendation from one of my favourite BookTokers, Claire Linney. She recommended Blood Debts by Terry J. Benton-Walker. To borrow and paraphrase a bit of her summary — because that’s what got me hooked:

    Two 16-year-old twins are part of a magical bloodline, but a murder has doomed their name and stripped their mother of her throne. The story is told from the perspectives of both the twins and their adversaries. It features a magic system that’s used to comment on race, and the politics and policing around it.

    Please check out Claire’s full review here.

    I have downloaded it and it’s now on my overflowing ereader ready to read.

    @claire_linney

    Blood Debts and Blood Justice by Terry J Benton Walker – young adult for ages 13+ #diversebooks #blackauthors queerbooks #youngadultbooks #fantasybooks

    ♬ original sound – Claire Linney Author

    On Bluesky two posts on criticism have been shared:

    • One by New York Magazine
    • One by Reator Magazine (formly Tor.com):

    Do reviews draw readers? Boost subscriptions? Sell ads? And if the answer is ‘no,’ what then? Charlotte Klein explores the precarious state of cultural criticism.

    — New York Magazine (@nymag.com) 2025-09-08T09:10:36.872Z

    In the latest Mark As Read, @mollytempleton.com places The Death of the Critic into context. For how long has criticism has been dying, and how do we engage with discussions about art?reactormag.com/its-not-the-…

    — Reactor Magazine (@reactorsff.bsky.social) 2025-09-11T15:37:43.114Z

    I’m bookmarking these to digest later, but Niall Harrison pointed out a quote from Christine Smallwood that really interests me:

    Criticism is an act of autobiography. The work of making an argu­ment, coming to a judgment, or simply choosing which books or objects to give time and attention to is inevitably, helplessly, an expression of values

    And borrowing an item from Womble:

    A Bluesky post by Zach that says: I've been working on embracing the critic's version of this, which is "life is too short to tackle a book about which you don't have something interesting to say, good or bad" Zach is quoting Sonora Taylor: For anyone who needs to hear this: life is too short to finish a book you're not enjoying. Prose is annoying you? Don't finish it. It feels like a chore to pick up and read? Don't finish it. Just not feeling it? Don't finish it. We're not in class. There won't be a test. Read for *your* enjoyment.

    I need to ponder this some more. If you’re a media outlet (like Locus) or a specialist blog, you’ll likely be commenting on ‘significant’ or potentially ‘significant’ books in your area of interest. But more generally, I think we’re in the age of influencers — and influencers should be more willing to step back from the flow and share what’s important to them. Claire and Womble are both great examples of that philosophy.

    As an aside, I’m enjoying reading anthologies for my BFA challenge. However, I’ve given myself permission to skip those that don’t resonate from the start or that I fizzle out with. I’m unlikely to have anything interesting to say about them—unless the number of skips ends up reflecting something about the anthology as a whole.

    Don’t tell anyone, but I’m struggling to find time to listen to audiobooks — which is why I’ve been reading The Devils by Joe Abercrombie since the 7th of May and I’m only 46% through. It’s frustrating because I’m really enjoying Steven Pacey’s performance, and I want to listen to Let the Bad Times Roll by Alice Slatter.

    I’m going to have to just read the ebook versions of both, which will be great — but not quite the experience I was hoping for.

    Lastly, what are my plans for the rest of September? Well, I need to crack on with World Fantasy Award novellas:

    • Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud (Tor Nightfire / Titan Books)
    • In the Shadow of Their Dying by Michael F. Fletcher and Anna Smith Spark (Grimdark Magazine)
    • Yoke of Stars by R. B. Lemberg (Tachyon Publications)
    • The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo (Tordotcom)
    • The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed (Tordotcom / Titan Books UK)

    And finsih the remaining British Fantasy Awards Best Anthology nominees:

    • Heartwood: A Mythago Wood Anthology, edited by Dan Coxon – PS Publishing
    • The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction (2023), edited by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Chinaza Eziaghighala – Caezik SF & Fantasy
    • Bury Your Gays – An Anthology of Tragic Queer Horror, edited by Sofia Ajram – Ghoulish Books

    I can guarantee you that I’m not looking forward to Bury Your Gays—it’s exactly the type of tales I tend to avoid—but I’ve committed myself now, so wish me luck when I get there.

    Apart from those, I’m planning to finish The Devils and The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso, as I keep pushing them aside for the anthologies. My last experience with The Last Hour Between Worlds had me sitting there gasping at something she had cleverly woven in. Like The Devils, The Last Hour Between Worlds is proving to be very entertaining.

    Until next week—happy reading!

  • BFA25 Review: Fight Like A Girl 2 edited by Roz Clarke and Joanne Hall

    This is the third review from my challenge to read the 2025 British Fantasy Award Best Anthology category.

    In the introduction, Charlotte Bond writes:

    Whatever your taste, whatever you’re looking for, in these pages, you will learn one thing: how to fight like a girl.

    And I did — though I also found a few stories that weren’t to my taste, which is a shame. With fewer stories than the other anthologies I’ve read so far, the weaker ones stand out a little more — but never mind, there are still some standout tales here.

    K T Davies’s The Seamstress, the Hound, the Cook, and her Brother surprised me the most using a triptych to follow a crime through different eyes. Having seen the situation build from competing viewpoints, the shifting perspectives give the reader deeper insight into the final scene.

    Shifts in perspective are definitely a theme.

    One perspective I enjoyed — though I felt a little cheated by — was in A Human Response by Dolly Garland. Here a women’s body is replaced, and she finds herself trapped. Slowly, she pieces together what happens to her. The character is supposed to be without emotion, yet she has emotional reactions, which feels jarring. It also fades to black at a key moment in the ending, which I think robbed the character of the agency Garland had built up.

    In In More Trouble Than She’s Worth? by Cheryl Morgan, the narrator lacks agency, but her perspective offers some great observations. For example:

    I like the chrome in the sick bay, but am not convinced by the white. My crew have odd taste at times. I, by the way, am Sagaris, an Artemis Class cruiser of the Queen’s Amazon Navy, General Thomys commanding.

    And

    I got him though, didn’t I?, I thought proudly to myself. You can’t scrag a target without wobbling a few crew stomachs. A little non-fatal discomfort does the little ones good.

    In this tale, the crew picks up some very precious cargo. Morgan uses the situation to explore how women can be both mothers and fighters — and how that differs from their enemies. This one made me cry.

    The arrogance of men was explored by directly and successfully by both Gaie Sebold and Juliet E. McKenna.

    In Ambition’s Engine, Sebold takes us to high society, where a newly appointed Chief Defender of the Dominion’s Transport hatches a plan to get more from a train ride than he was commissioned for. Sebold packs in commentary about war, colonialism, and the arrogance of powerful men.

    With Civil War, McKenna examines the impact of a change in monarch when the King has no male heir. She explores the options available to the court and the guilds. This was a like watching a royal game of chess and I didn’t see final the move until it was too late. Very cleverly done.

    In the introduction Roz Clarke and Joanne Hall suggest:

    ‘…perhaps now we can look beyond a direct kick back against the idea that women can’t fight, and start to reintegrate more traditionally acceptable forms of feminine power with that warrior archetype.’

    And they’ve proved with this collection that fighting and feminine power take many forms — from the bloody, to the subtle, to the fearless — with motivations that defy the ‘warrior archetype’.

    If you don’t need convincing that women can fight, this collection is for you. There are some excellent stories here.

    And if you do need some persuasion, this collection is also for you — though you might end up a little more paranoid than before, as not all fights are direct confrontations or fairly fought.

    Anthology Details

    Title: Fight Like a Girl – Volume 2
    Editors: Roz Clarke, Joanne Hall
    Publisher: Wizard’s Tower Press
    Publication Date: Autumn 2024
    ISBN (Paperback): 9781913892845
    ISBN (EPUB): 9781913892852
    ISBN (MOBI): 9781913892869
    Format: Paperback, EPUB, MOBI

  • BFA25 Review: I Want That Twink OBLITERATED! edited by Berg, McCartney & Galey

    This is the second review from my challenge to read the 2025 British Fantasy Award Best Anthology category.

    The title of I Want That Twink OBLITERATED! is provocative. It came from a comment made in jest, which sparked a train of thought that led to an anthology of…

    …stories that reclaim the idea of pulp for a queer audience, centre masculinities in a new light, and take [the reader] on a damn fun ride. Pulp parody, pulp pastiche, and pulp deconstruction.

    And unlike Death Becomes Her, I’m going to give you a warning before you drink the Queer-Aid:

    The stories in this volume run the gamut(s!) between funny, horny, heartbreaking, thrilling, horrific, explicit, and more.

    The opening story, In the Garden of the Serpent King by James Bennett, jumps right in, presenting the promised themes of humour, horror, and eroticism.

    The tone is set by exploring the question: “How do you subvert the ‘Englishman in Congo’ trope?”

    The answer is: you hammer home how of-its-time it was—in the gayest way possible. And the hammer keeps hitting home, tale after tale. This is not a subtle collection, but it contains lots of subtleties as themes emerge and intertwine.

    An overarching one is age and beauty, but the stories also explore narcissism turned into cannibalism, perfection as slavery, and—more importantly—love and legacy.

    These stories are best approached with a camp sense of fun, because there are a couple that are so silly they might be annoying—yes, Tea, Shade, and Drag Crusades by Bailey Maybray, I am thinking about you. It takes the “lip sync for your life” idea off into space. Where I feel Bailey fell short is that there are bits in the story that fail its own internal logic.

    Just as silly, but more successful, is Dotch Masher and the Planet ‘MM’ by William C. Tracy. This time, there’s a race across space to stop a villain—but are they rivals, or are they lovers? Now that’s a question that rears its head a lot.

    The conflict between internal and external is explored in Plezure by Rand Webber, which is reminiscent of The Stepford Wives—at least at the start—but evolves as the spell starts to crumble, thanks to love.

    Love is powerful. These authors have drawn on it and utilised it. The love can be familial (found or blood), friendly, or romantic. And it’s strong.

    I can now say I’ve read Aliette de Bodard. In The Tutelary, the Assassin, and the Healer, we encounter love in its negative and positive forms—grief and anger alongside romantic bonds—as it asks the question: What would you do for those you love? Taking a journey on a potentially insane ship seems to be one of them.

    In Yesterday’s Heroes by Charlie Winter, a warrior comes out of retirement to find someone he loves—but I’ll let you figure out what type of love the Boy in the tale represents.

    And despite the title’s request, not all twinks are obliterated. They are celebrated. And in some cases, they need to continue to be heard.

    Like the Tharsis Courier in Dusk and Dawn in the Grand Bazaar by John Berkeley, and the acquisition specialist in Hazard Pay by Malcolm Schmitz.

    I can’t leave this review without mentioning two of my favourites, as I’ve not had a way of slipping them in thus far—but I hope we get to see the twinks in these:

    • Narcissus Munro, Thief for Hire by Kieran Craft
    • In Sheep’s Clothing by Caleb Roehrig

    Before I go, it’s clear that despite some clumsiness in a few stories, I found them emotionally resonant. That might not be the case for every reader, but I think the editors hit their goal of reclaiming the idea of pulp, with stories that centred masculinities in a new light—and took this reader on a damn fun ride.

    Anthology Details

    • Title: I Want That Twink OBLITERATED!: A Radical Anthology of Queer SFF
    • Editors: Trip Galey, C.L. McCartney, Robert Berg
    • Publisher: Bona Books
    • Publication Date: November 1, 2024
    • ISBN: 9781068731112
    • Format: Paperback