My brain is absolute cheese right now, so please imagine that I’ve written you a very clever and interesting intro.

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BOOKS READ:

The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes (2025)
Format: ebook and paperback (Tor Nightfire)

I’m coming to trust Hiron Ennes as a solid purveyor of weird and inventive, gruesome and satisfying genre fiction. Their debut novel Leech (2022) was a slightly-too long but fascinating blend of sci-fi, dystopian and gothic horror in which a single organism cut off from its hive mind did a sort-of battle with a competing parasite. Despite its comp titles (there’s no publishing any book these days without its comp titles, however tenuous their connections to the finished work) it didn’t particularly remind me of anything else, which is always exciting to come across. What it did do was provide really wonderful accompaniment to two other authors with unique voices I discovered within two months (either side) of reading Leech: Sara A Mueller and Tamsyn Muir.

In The Works of Vermin, Ennes takes us into an impossible fantasy city built deep into the ground and high into the air, overrun with enormous botannicals and, correspondingly, enormous bugs. The class system is rigid, the wealth gap vast, and debts and corporate ownership are inked into the skin of the poor. We follow two sets of characters through a moment of complex political upheaval: the first, a close-knit group of indentured exterminators who hunt a giant centipede and get caught up in some Serious Coroporate Takeover Shit, and the second an indentured perfumer owned by the marshal to the opera-loving, fascistic chancellor, who seems to be falling for a mysterious young man with revolution on his mind.

You really have to trust Ennes on this one. They’re not too interested in explaining how anything in their world works, trusting you instead to take note of context cues and keep up. It’s extremely refreshing amidst the more popular trend of beating the reader over the head—repeatedly—with every detail, and the reward comes in slow waves of increasing understanding. And what a payoff! The story is a treat: a neat little clockwork puzzle filled with charming characters and an arts scene that is literally to die for.

Honeyeater by Kathleen Jennings (2025)
Format: Paperback (Picador)

It’s rare that a book published internationally is set in Australia, let alone Queensland, but here we are! And a dark fantasy/supernatural horror no less!

Honeyeater is a short, atmospheric novel in which Charlie Wren reluctantly returns to his hometown to pack up his auntie’s home after she dies. This is an unpleasant task made worse by the facts that, despite raising Charlie and his sister, said auntie was cold, cruel and strange; that his unbearably perfect sister is now a local political icon; that anyone Charlie gets close to has a habit of turning up dead in the local river (which the cops have noticed); that a bored young neighbour keeps breaking into the garden; and that a mysterious woman made of roses and river water has just crawled into Charlie’s aunt’s house and refuses to leave.

The power of this book lies in Jennings’ prose and her excellent grasp of Australian Gothic imagery. Honeyeater is rich with a very Australian brand of dread: all daylight and peeling paperback, swarming, swooping magpies, rising water and stifling heat. The book has a fantastic framing device in which the neighbourhood gathers on high ground during a flood to tell each other (ostensibly true) horror stories and folklore from the history of the town, each of them deliciously creepy in their own, very regional Australian way. Honeyeater only really faltered for me in the piecing together of the main mystery. Charlie is a likable protagonist, but so clueless that the climax requires a bit too much monologuing to bring everything together. But the other points of view (the neighbourhood girl and the river woman) are strong and compelling, and on the whole I found this book to be a breath of dank air (complimentary). It’s a great take on a ghost story, and it lands in a really satisfying place.

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (2025)
Format: ebook (Pan Macmillan)

This needs to be made clear before we progress further: I hate time travel.

There are many, many impossible narrative devices that I can suspend disbelief for and roll with, but time travel is not one of them. No matter how technically and creatively excellent, however emotionally effective a time travel thing may be, the part of me that hates time travel is still going to have a terrible time.

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow is a time travel story.

I knew it was a time travel story going in, thankfully (the only thing worse to me than a time travel story is a secret time travel story, which happens upsettingly often), and picked it up anyway because a) a group of friends with solidly compatible taste were absolutely raving about it, and b) because I’d read Harrow’s proof of concept short story, The Sixth Deaths of the Saint, a few years ago and was curious to see how she’d expand on it in a novel length work. And I think she does a great job!

The Everlasting is a second-world fantasy that explores how history and cultural mythology can be stoked and/or flattened in the service of nationalism and fascism. Owen Mallory is a disabled war veteran turned historian specialising in Una Everlasting, the mythic knight of old whose tragic sacrifice spurred him and countless others to fight for their country for more than a millennia after her death. A surprise request from a magnetic politician lets Owen go back in time to write — and shape — Una’s story first hand, at which point he realises he’s falling in love with her, and that he has been there, and fallen in love with her, many, many times before.

I found a lot to love in this book. Owen and Una are great characters, and while I found their love story a little unconvincing as presented on the page (I’m never particularly convinced by characters who are in love because they’ve always been in love and always will be in love etc, etc), I enjoyed them as a pair. I suspect I’m in the minority of readers of this book who enjoyed the “contemporary” portions more than the “medieval” ones, but Owen’s world is far more populated than Una’s and I found his supporting characters really compelling. His complicated relationship with his father, an alcoholic socialist anti-war veteran was a paticular highlight for me, and the journey they took was one of my favourite aspects of the story.

As far as looping time travel goes, I think Harrow does her utmost to keep it from feeling too repetitive, and it mostly works. The thing that doesn’t quite succeed for me is how absolutely convoluted the villain’s plan is, and how much monologuing it requires to be conveyed, let alone understood (the logic of the piece unravels every time I look too hard at it, which I can’t help doing, because TIME TRAVEL), but I’ll allow it for the broader authoritarian commentary. And I did appreciate that Harrow built the apparent need to monologue into the character.

Overall, a very good book by a very good writer. I’d recommend it widely to anyone looking for a standalone adult fantasy, particularly if you’re already a fan of historical fiction or looking to dip a toe in that direction, given how clearly both eras shown here are modelled on post-WW1 and Medieval Britain (specifically, England and Wales).

I would honestly like to have loved this book as much as everyone else seems to be, but alas. Time travel.

Where The Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler (2025)
Format: Hardcover (Weidenfeld & Nicolson; Inkstone special edition)

A dystopian sci-fi thriller following a broad cast through the global collapse of AI leadership (and one very human authoritarian) that I don’t have much to say about. It’s clever and interesting in concept, pretty sparse in the prose, and a little stilted in the dialogue (which I assume was a purposeful choice, given how much of this book is set in and around what seems to be Russia). I found the vignettes of life under totalitarian control to be the strongest portions of the book by far, but overall it read quickly, came together more or less satisfyingly, and ended on quite a nice note.

This would be my equivalent of a beach read, if I was the sort of person to willingly lay in the sun and/or on sand.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (1900)
Format: Audiobook, performed by Brooke Shields

Every witch and their dog was talking about Wicked For 2/Part Good in November, which naturally led me to watch The Wizard of Oz for the first time in a solid few decades, which brought on the realisation that I’ve never actually read the original book in full.

I don’t know what it says about me that I find a children’s book published in 1900 funnier than most actual modern comedies, but I had such a fabulous time with this. A real classic journey fantasy that sees a precious little girl and the best dog of all time yoinked from humble, grey Kansas into a beautiful, magical country by a cyclone, where they immediately commit manslaughter against a tyrant, and are extorted into doing it again on the land’s other magical authoritatian by a stressed-out charlatan. It’s charming, a lot of fun, has aged remarkably well, and is more gruesome and filled with danger than I expected (the tin woodman’s origin story is fantastically violent). But kids, of course, love that shit, and so, it turns out, do I.

You Wanna Be On Top? by Sarah Hartshorne (2025)
Format: Audiobook, performed by the author

Inside me are two wolves. One is someone who has worked in television and has heard reams of firsthand horror stories re: the ethical nightmare and utter bullshit mill that is reality television. The other was a teenager when the first season of America’s Next Top Model began airing, and watched them religiously. This book, a memoir written by the “plus size” contestant of 2007’s Cycle 9, appeals to both.

I’m always a little wary of memoirs, particularly of the ‘tell all’ variety due to the unreliable nature of memory and the fairly understandable urge of the people writing them to want to portray themselves in the best possible light. But Hartshorne set my mind at ease early by presenting a very minor incident in her life from two conflicting perspectives: her memory vs the memory of the other person in the room. Throughout the book she cites entries from a journal she kept at the time of filming and quotes other contestents and crew she reached out to while writing for confirmation, as well as published memoirs and interviews from the presumably less accessible key talent involved (notably, Nigel Barker and Mr. Jay), which doesn’t so much assure me that this is a 100% accurate retelling of the ANTM experience (what would that even look like?) but more that the author hasn’t served us an unsourced creative writing exercise with zero personal reflection and called it a work of non-fiction.

Okay, I’m just still very annoyed about Careless People.

You Wanna Be On Top? is the sort of book that will appeal to almost nobody who didn’t buy into America’s Next Top Model and Tyra Banks’s particular brand of toxic nonsense, but it’s a short, fascinating, well-written and infuriating read about all the ways fashion culture and reality TV worked to exploit and psychologically terrorise waves upon waves of unpaid young women, most of whom were left flat broke and with bad hair, a useless portfolio, and no tangible pathway into the modelling industry. Hartshorne’s complicated final resolution from the book: ‘Thank you; pay me’ is a fair and, unfortunately, still relevant demand.

MEDIA WATCHED:

The Fall (Dir. by Tarsem, 2006)
Owned on Blu Ray

I’m sick to shit of digital media and am therefore (among other, physically tangible things) slowly building little blu-ray library. The Fall is a movie I watched many years ago in a not particularly hi-res stream on a laptop screen and still thought was gorgeous, so when it scored a blu-ray and 4k release this year I snapped it up to finally watch in all its proper glory. And oh boy!

Stunning visuals aside (and I don’t just mean Lee Pace and his extremely attractive fairy tale friends), it’s an interesting little movie. It takes place almost entirely in a Californian hospital in 1915, where our protagonist, a very young and adorable Romanian immigrant is gently swindled by a (possibly permanently) disabled stuntman into stealing drugs from the pharmacy in his quest to commit suicide. All of this is cloaked in an epic adventure story that borrows heavily from the film the stuntman was injured making, but is portrayed to us through the vivid imagination of the little girl. If that set-up sounds a bit dark, it’s because it is. The film does a great job of balancing what the little girl sees and understands with what’s really going on, and the effect is heartbreaking. But it’s beautiful, too, and with the ending left as arguably ambiguous as it is, you get to decide whether it’s a happy, neutral or a sad one.

This film does sit within a wider trend of films that feature disabled characters who are either actively suicidal, nobly dying, or are a burden to their carers, and I think it’s worth asking why these stories are the dominant narrative for disabled characters on film. If anyone’s written about The Fall from a disability perspective, I’d love to be linked to it!

Taken in isolation, however, this film hits so many of the beats my heart yearns for. It’s sad, it’s spectacular, it’s more than a little melodramatic, and without being a literal portal fantasy it plays into that grand tradition of little kids being whisked into heightened worlds where they (sorta) triumph over evil, aka, complicated adult emotions. One of my rainy day/need-a-little-cry comfort movies for sure.

Predator: Badlands (Dir. by Dan Trachtenberg, 2025)
Watched in a cinema

Prey was such a surprise hit for me when it was released direct-to-streaming in 2022, so I was very happy to hear that its director and story guy would be returning for another crack. And this time with a cinema release!

Whereas Prey shook up the Predator formula by following a young Comanche woman in 1719 (the sole witness and survivor of several attacks by an alien hunter who sees her as so little of a threat that his strict code prevents him from attacking her), Badlands shifts the point of view to the titular aliens themselves. Dek is a weakling by Yautja standards, and in order to avoid being culled by his own family and accepted into the clan, he needs to use his first hunt to bring home the biggest, baddest, most impossible to get trophy in the known galaxy (and no, it’s not on Earth). What he finds instead is a new ally in the form of a heavily damaged, but still very chipper android (the always likeable Elle Fanning), and an opportunity to belong to something better.

It’s… weirdly lovely?

It’s also family friendly, bearing the franchise’s first PG-13 classification. There’s still a bit of gore (mostly confined to monster guts), and a whole load of violence, but it’s all either cleverly cut around — as in the opening — or by making all of the victims androids (a point emphasised by giving them all the same face). As I said in the Wonderful Wizard section, kids love this shit! And so, of course, do I!

I know I’ve established myself here as a sucker for sad media, but I also have a huge soft spot for action — especially sci fi action — and I had an absolute blast watching this. It felt like watching a 90’s movie with 2020’s technology (which doesn’t mean generative AI, thank god): a simple story well told, with fun characters, great action set-pieces, and a 100 minute runtime. Take your kids! Take your siblings! Have a good time! And if you get the chance to watch Prey (less kid friendly, but probably fine for your teens) and Badlands in a double feature, you absolutely should.

Some Like It Hot (Dir. by Billy Wilder, 1959)
Streamed on Stan

It’s 1920’s Chicago! A lothario saxophone player (Tony Curtis) and his gullible double-bass playing buddy (Jack Lemmon) have witnessed a mob hit! To save their skins, they don drag and go into hiding amongst a travelling troupe of women’s musicians, but staying under the radar as a woman is tricky when all your new travelling companions are super hot, super funny and dangerously keen on partying. Chief among them is Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), a ukulele wielding singer who aspires to marry a millionaire but has a terrible weakness for saxophone players… and that’s just the set up!

I kept waiting for this 66-year old screwball comedy to do something offensive and it just… never happened. Some Like It Hot has a sparkling script, fantastic energy, brilliant chemistry, and has aged surprisingly well. Women and queer folk aren’t the butt of the joke here. Instead, we get some fun reflection on male sleaze and a charming little about face when Jack Lemmon’s character dreams of marriage to a millionaire of his own. His blissful delivery of “I am” to Tony Curtis’s “Who’s the lucky girl?” has stayed with me for weeks.

It’s an absolute hoot of a flick, strongly recommended for your next movie night with your partner/s or a bestie. Just prepare yourself for Marilyn Monroe’s barely there Florida dress. Nobody was kidding about that woman’s charisma or her magnificent bosom.

Pluribus (Created by Vince Gilligan)
Streamed on Apple TV

Despite being a TV person, I have to cop to the fact that I never finished Breaking Bad (a very good show whose second season finale was so devastating I had to take a break from watching it, which, 14 years later, I am still on) and never started Better Call Saul (obviously I can’t start it until I’ve finished the other one). But Vince Gilligan has done me a solid by creating something wholly new and unconnected! Thanks, man!

Pluribus is a dystopian sci-fi series in which an alien virus connects almost every human on the planet (and on the ISS, apparently) into a euphoric hive mind. Our protagonist, Carol, grumpy lesbian and bestselling author, is one of only thirteen people total who seem to be immune to the virus. Having lost her wife as one of the millions of bodily casualties in “the joining”, Carol and the hive mind enter into a standoff as she seeks to reverse the virus and save humanity, while the hive uses every resource at its disposal (which is… all of them) to make her “happy” and conquer whatever’s keeping her from becoming one with the hive.

The show is still airing, so I won’t say too much about it yet. But I am — so far — a big fan of what Gilligan and co are doing. It’s a very grounded approach to the idea of a zombie apocalypse/alien invasion. Despite the immense number of extras (the scenes where the hive mind Makes Shit Happen are incredible feats of choreography) this is often a one-woman show. We sit with Carol for long, patient shots, scenes and sequences as she comes to terms with, seeks to undo, and/or drinks to cope with the absolute madness of what’s happening. It’s a powerful performance from Rhea Seehorn, and the creatives behind the show have been showing a lot of trust in the viewer to make up our own minds as to what’s happening and how we want to feel about it… to the point where people can’t even really agree on what tone this show is taking (some think it’s a drama, some a comedy, and I personally think it’s a very effective horror), or whether Carol or the hive mind is the “good guy” (setting aside the nuance inherent to that discussion, OBVIOUSLY it’s Carol! But then I am a sane person who do not yearn to join the fucking hive). I think that’s a sign of an interesting show! Sci-fi concepts should evoke thought and discussion! TV in general should make you want to talk about it!

I’m fascinated to know where this story is going, and I’ll check back in with you when this season is done. In the meantime, join me and tell me if you’re team hive mind or team Carol. And if you’re team hive mind for any reason other than the environment benefits or because you are very tired and need a little neural holiday, I’m going to need you to do some ‘splaining.

IN SHORT:

- As mentioned somewhere in the many words above, I watched The Wizard of Oz for the first time in a good long while. It’s a really clever adaptation that elegantly spins the first book in a 14 book series into a neat standalone, and went on to inspire a great many of my favourite movies, books and shows. Five stars, an eternal classic for a reason.

- I’ve been watching new Aussie TV show He Had It Coming on Stan, which is a dark comedy/murder mystery in which two unlikely new platonic girlfriends get accidentally swept up in a spate of misandrist murders on a uni campus beset by male violence against women. It’s a bit tonally uneven and occasionally on the nose, but its heart is in the right place and the cast is ace. It’s also really nice to hear Liv Hewson use their natural Aussie accent. I haven’t completed the season yet, so I can’t say whether it sticks the landing, but overall I’d encourage all the Aussies to give it a look in and support a local show trying to do something a bit different.

- My mum stayed over and so we watched Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein, which she hadn’t seen yet and which I wrote about in October’s blog. I had all of the same critiques, but once again I had a very good time in spite of them.

- I finished The Diplomat season three, and I have to confess that I felt a little underwhelmed. While I get the need for it, a significant time jump is a difficult thing to pull off after 2.5 seasons of tense sequential action and introducing a different love interest after said 2.5 seasons of yearning for someone else on top of that is a hard sell, even if it’s Aiden Turner. I also fear that Kate is becoming criminally stupid (did anyone really think Trowbridge was going to do ANYTHING ELSE WITH THAT INFORMATION?), and unprofessionally horny. I love a heightened drama, but ma’am, I need you to think before you drop those underpants. At least I can always count on Idra.

MISCELLANEOUS MEDIA I’VE ENJOYED:

I have another poem for you! This one is by Hayley DeRoche and is, I’m afraid, a bit of a bummer, but one should never miss the opportunity to scream to everyone you know about what a nightmare ChatGPT and and its generative buddies are.

Things You Can Make ChatGPT Write for You

Your last words
But before them
What to murmur to a lover in bed
What to say in the group chat when someone's
Sister mother brother is dead and
The apology you could never quite get right for a friend And hell why not make the robot compose your proposal
Your wedding toast, too
Your best friend's birthday roast
You could ask it to write a custom lullaby For the baby snuffling at your breast.
You can cradle to grave away
Every warm human word
You could ever have said
And when they chisel your gravestone
For your final rest
We can ask ChatGPT
Because it knew you best

—

That was November, and this was my last blog of 2025! Thank you for reading along with me for any (or all!) of this year. I enjoy writing these media missives, and however much of them you actually read, it’s been so lovely knowing that a few of you are on the other end of it all.

So please stay safe and, whether you celebrate the holidays or not, I hope your end of the year is peaceful, restful, and full of all the things you like best.

See you in January!

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