Hey!

This week is all about favorites and anticipated book lists. It’s shaping up to be an exciting reading year.

A-Side

We Are the Stranger Things
My partner wanted to watch the final season of Stranger Things, so we mainlined the whole series at the end of 2025. I had seen three seasons already, so only season four and five were new to me. I’m on film/TV TikTok, as much as you can be with its algorithm, where the vibe is much more critical (the JohnLock conspiracy theorists walked so these new fans could run…wild). It was fascinating to read this essay from Kameron Hurley from a more positive perspective. She highlighted critiques that I’ve been hearing for months, but unlike the people who made them, she set them to the side and kept looking at what the the art itself was saying despite the flaws. I also wonder how much of the negative reaction is coming from edgelords who think mass death and uncertainty grant a piece of art more value. Hurley’s essay, even if you don’t agree with her analysis, is a nice way to look at the series from a different angle.

Anyone Can Vote in the Hugo Awards — And Here’s How
At Reactor, Molly Templeton wrote a great essay about how (and why!) to vote for the Hugo Awards. This is of great interest to me, specifically, because my main personality traits are Hugo nomination and the Hugo long list released after the awards. As Molly writes, “An awards cycle is a conversation about what the readers of a genre are interested in, thinking about, avoiding thinking about, grappling with, falling in love with, falling out of love with. What I want is for more people to be part of that conversation.” I cannot stress how much more closed off the Hugo Award process felt even a decade ago. Before that? Oof. It’s hard to see how far we’ve come and how much the internet has leveled the playing field for marginalized folks to even be considered. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. That’s what a broad nominating base can accomplish together.

Reviews/Discussions

Asunder by Kerstin Hall (Stewart Hotston)
Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree (Dina @ SFF Book Reviews)
Cinder House by Freya Marske (Carrie S. @ Smart Bitches, Trashy Books)
The Curse of the Mistwraith by Janny Wurts (Part 1) (Green Team of the Legendarium)
Daedalus is Dead by Seamus Sullivan (Archita Mittra @ Locus)
This Gilded Abyss by Rebecca Thorne (Cat Treadwell @ The Fantasy Hive)
The Dragon Masters by Jack Vance (Brian Collins @ SFF Remembrance)
The Gryphon King by Sara Omer (Paul Weimer @ Nerds of a Feather)
Hole in the Sky by Daniel H. Wilson (Alexandra Pierce @ Locus)
Hole in the Sky by Daniel H. Wilson (Andrew Liptak @ Transfer Orbit)
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang (Petrik Leo @ Novel Notions)
The King Must Die by Kemi Ashing-Giwa (Gary K. Wolfe @ Locus)
Orlanda by Jacqueline Harpman (Abigail Nussbaum @ Locus)
Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee (Only The Best Fantasy Novels)
Saturation Point by Adrian Tchaikovsky (T.O. Munroe @ The Fantasy Hive)
The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling (Maggie @ The Lesbrary)
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm (Paul Di Filippo @ Locus)
Through Gates of Garnet and Gold by Seanan McGuire (Celeste @ Novel Notions)
The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes (Niall Harrison @ Locus)
The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes (Zachary Gillan @ Ancillary Review of Books)

B-Side

Congrats to Kristen at Fantasy Cafe for a big anniversary! Please go give her some love if you’re on Bluesky. 💜

And another happy anniversary (TEN YEARS!!!) to The Rec Center. Fannish writing is time consuming, but always rewarding, and I love watching writers I admire so much reach incredible milestones.

We’re continuing the favorite lists with Caitlin from Realms of My Mind, who shared her new release favorites and backlist favorites. Abigail Nussbaum listed her favorite books, and seeing this list made me go, “Wait, maybe The Raven Scholar DOES have a chance at the popular SFF awards…?” At SFF Book Reviews, Dina has a combo post of both 2025 and backlist titles. Andrew Liptak has his favorite books of the year over at Transfer Orbit. Ceinwen Langley has a few SFF picks mixed in with a larger list of favorites. Lauren Stoolfire did a best of list in survey form, which I always find very neat. Kristen over at Fantasy Cafe shared her favorite books as well as blog highlights for the year (The Raven Scholar supremacy!!!). Carli St. George applied some fun categories to her faves, like Favorite Book About Bodysharing and Most Cannibalism (Complimentary).

The Strange Horizons reviewers offer reflections and favorites for 2025 in two parts: Part One and Part Two. There’s an interesting selection of best-of SFF books over at Scientific American. A.C. Wise has a list of her favorite novels (I want it on the record, when The Everlasting makes a ton of award short lists, that I called it). At Five Books, there’s a list of the best SFF audiobooks of the year. If you want to go deep into the SFF backlists, Joachim Boaz has a list of favorites from the 1900s (who else read that and turned into dust?). Finally (for now), on Youtube, Tori has her top ten for the year.

Of course, now we’re in January and folks are looking forward to the year in books. Kelsey at The Fancy Hat Lady Reads has her list from January through June and Only the Best Fantasy Novels has one for the same time period. Sia at Every Book a Doorway has a list of unmissable 2026 books. The Fantasy Hive has their list of anticipated books up, another long list from a non-U.S. source, so there are some titles I hadn’t seen elsewhere. Here’s a massive list of 2026 horror releases.

LitHub has a wide selection of upcoming titles, some of which I’m assuming skew more literary (based on the blurbs). Barnes & Noble has their anticipated lists up, but weirdly, adult fantasy is mixed in with YA and the science fiction that’s there is in the fiction category. Gizmodo has their list of titles out in January 2026. Over at the Nerd Daily, there’s a massive collection of YA titles out in 2026; they’re not sorted by genre, though. They also have a general list of fiction, sorted by month.

In the short fiction sphere, Myna Chang has a round up of flash fiction from December 2025. The WYRMHOLE released a new issue, where the editors share links to the short fiction they wrote in 2025. (Sidebar self-promo: if you like short fiction recs and HOLE puns, you can subscribe using this link! I am on a Journey to be their #1 Fan.) Womble read and discussed the third issue of The Remains.

If you’re a) a writer and (optional) b) finished Heated Rivalry and c) want to write some sports-themed short fiction, Shousetsu Bang*Bang is doing a sports-themed issue for February. It doesn’t have to be SFF, but listen! There’s obviously a market for queer sports stories space is gay. What sports would people play in zero G? Meanwhile, if you’re into reading nonfiction to inspire your writing, my pal quartzen is doing the Worldbuilder's Book Club for 2026 over on Storygraph.

Ancillary Review of Books churned out content over the holiday: there’s a new Wow! Signal column of collected criticism/analysis. They collected a list of notable criticsm from 2025, which includes a ton of awesome pieces; I’m still working my way through it. They also have a call for reviews/essays for April 2026 releases. Serious question: does Casella have a clone army?

In Star*Line, there’s an interview with Marie Brennan, winner of the Best Poetry Hugo. I regret to inform her that her value as a trivia answer will not go down with the addition of a perma category. It will go up, because now the trivia question will be, “who was the first winner?” Nerd Daily has a short interview with Nicole Glover, who has a new novel coming out this year called The Starseekers, and another with Sadie Turner, author of Tidespeaker. On If This Goes On (Don't Panic), they interview Thomas Ha, author of Uncertain Sons and Other Stories.

In exciting news, C.L. Polk is writing a D&D tie-in novel, The Feywild Job. The cover is beautiful. Exit Party, the new book coming from Emily St. John Mandel, has a cover. Everina Maxwell has a new book coming out later this year, Call Me Traitor. I loved Winter’s Orbit and thought Ocean’s Echo was great, so I’m stoked.

For more great links, check out Wombling Along.

Art recs: Sourpusses by Mali; Jam tonight by Dominique Ramsey; Snorse by Sygnin; Glen Elendra's Answer by Sam Guay; night and day by meyo; Strawberry icecream birb by Athanaca; Fish in Vernazza by Big Hippo; a moment outside of time by StuntmAEn Bob; Califiornia Quail by Joy

Outro

I wrote about my favorite books of 2025, plus all my very nerdy reading stats. There are colorful pie charts! I’m really pleased with my reading last year and hoping for another banger 12 months. Hopefully next week I will have some survey analysis ready, too. I’ve been very good at leaving it alone while people filled it out. :D

That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend! — Renay