Hey!

This week I finished my reread of the Finder Chronicles by Suzanne Palmer (Finder, Driving the Deep, The Scavenger Door, Ghostdrift) and I love them all for wildly different reasons. I want so much more of this universe, and I’m so sad it won’t happen. Now I have to wait another six months before I’m allowed to reread them again. No one else has to wait, though! If any fellow ace pals out there are looking for a fun space opera series where family/friendship is most important, may I suggest: this.

A-Side

Into the Midnight Wood by Alexandra McCollum
I haven’t read this book yet, but I am going to read this book now, thanks to this review by Jenny. Jenny’s writing is electric in its descriptions and crushingly honest while still being gentle, holding each book in her cupped palms like fragile baby birds, even when she is telling that baby bird it was very naughty to leave the nest when it had not yet cooked enough to be able to fly. Even if you don’t read romantasy, or don’t plan to read this book, reading this review of the book is a delight.

The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction
It’s award seasons all over, and the Le Guin Prize opened its nomination form on March 1. Anyone can nominate a book. This is a newer award, and every year the judging panel surfaces some of the most interesting books for their lists; not only literary genre fiction but also popular genre fiction that is engaging with similar ideas to Le Guin. I’m rooting hard for Notes From a Regicide to make the list.

Reviews/Discussions

After the Fall by Edward Ashton (Sasha Bonkowsky @ Reactor)
After the Fall by Edward Ashton (Galen Strickland @ Templeton Gate)
Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett (Krysta @ Pages Unbound Reviews)
An Arcane Inheritance by Kamilah Cole (Mylee J. Miller @ SFF Insiders)
The Apple and the Pearl by Rym Kechacha (Niall Harrison @ Locus)
Black Leviathan by Bernd Perplies, translated by Lucy Van Cleef (Rachel Cordasco @ SF in Translation)
China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh (Eddie Clark @ Nerds of a Feather)
Fool's Quest by Robin Hobb (Clara Cohen @ Nerds of a Feather)
The Gods Must Burn by T.R. Moore (Womble @ Runalong the Shelves)
Green & Deadly Things by Jenn Lyons (Kat Marsh @ The Fantasy Hive
Green & Deadly Things by Jenn Lyons (Realms of My Mind)
Green & Deadly Things by Jenn Lyons (Elias @ Bar Cart Bookshelf)
Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds (Paul Di Filippo @ Locus)
The House of Illusionists and Other Stories by Vanessa Fogg (Stephen Case @ Strange Horizons)
How to Lose a Goblin in Ten Days by Jessie Sylva (Dina @ SFF Book Reviews)
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (The Incomparable Podcast)
The Iron Garden Sutra by A. D. Sui (Roseanna Pendlebury @ Nerds of a Feather)
Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman (Trish Matson @ Skiffy & Fanty)
Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman (Vinay Vasan)
Slow Gods by Claire North (Cheryl Morgan @ Salon Futura)
Song of the Mysteries by Janny Wurts (Only the Best Fantasy Novels)
Sympathy Tower Tokyo by Rie Qudan, translated by Jesse Kirkwood (Abigail Nussbaum @ Asking the Wrong Questions)
Transmentation | Transgression by Darkly Lem (Alexandra Pierce @ Locus)

B-Side

Andrew Liptak at Transfer Orbit dropped the news that the Earthsea books are coming to Library of America. Very cool, although I think I’m a shallow person who would prefer some pretty end papers and beautiful art. Also, he shared a summary of the recent award shortlists, in case you don’t get tired of hearing about awards from me. When Strange Horizons did their fund drive, one of the stretch goals was a fungi issue, and now the call has gone out for nonfiction pieces. There are so many mushroom books out there. I know this is someone’s special interest and they are dying to write about all the books and how they’re using mushrooms to do world building and what it all means existentially.

Ancillary Review of Books posted their monthly call for reviews and essays, for media dropping in June 2026. At Five Books, Sylvia Bishop has a list of well-known authors and their lesser-known books. Not to start up the “stop recommending old white dude SFF all the time” Discourse again, but these lists can start getting more diverse any time now.

Gizmodo has their massive list of March 2026 releases out for perusal. Fangirlish has a list of their favorite books out in March. The Fantasy Hive crew selected their favorite books from February. At Reactor, Alex Brown has a thorough list of all the YA SFF/H books dropping in March and April. At Speculative Fiction in Translation, Rachel has collected all the pieces out in March.

The Narrated Podcast talked about their favorite book adaptations. There was a new episode of Sword & Laser, and I’m obsessed with their March Madness book tournament. The Octothorpe crew discussed their potential Best Novel nominations for the Hugos in Episodce #154.

The Tolkien Revolution continues, and for me, expands. What’s the thing where you see something once and then it’s everywhere? That. The Mythmakers Podcast has been at it for awhile, which I only just noticed. At Prospective Cultures, Nick Hubble continues their reread. Roseanna reaches the chapter with Treebeard, and don’t let the subject line fool you—it’s a deep dive. The Shelved by Genre crew read and discuss chapters 1 - 4 of The Fellowship of the Ring.

In short fiction, Neil Clarke shared the 2025 favorites from Clarkesworld readers. The March edition of Andrew Liptak’s Table of Contents is out, with updates to the February edition with more links. Tar Vol on has his February 2026 recap of short fiction reading. Womble reviewed the first issue of Adventitious. Emmie Christie has favorites from January and February with a bonus essay about community that’s worth a read. Myna Chang shared a flash round up from January and February. Brian Collins has a review of “The Thing from—’Outside’” by George Allan England.

Excerpts! There are a few: After the Fall by Edward Ashton; Entwined by H.M. Long; The Demon Star by Jesse Aragon; The Faraway Inn by Sarah Beth Durst; Voidverse by Damien Ober; and Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman.

I spent some time this week reading through my backlog of author interviews. Emmie Christie interviewed Renan Bernardo, with the bonus coverage of some of his short fiction. Paul Semel had interviews with A.D. Sui, author of The Iron Garden Sutra; Edward Ashton, author of After The Fall; and Matthew Kressel, author of The Rainseekers. Premee Mohamed, author of The Siege of Burning Grass, was on If This Goes On (Don't Panic). Rym Kechacha, author of The Apple and the Pearl, was on Breaking the Glass Slipper. Mike Chen has a short interview at Publishers Weekly. I’m very excited for his upcoming space opera, The Photonic Effect. Aren’t all of us who loved Mass Effect chasing that inspiration high?

For more SFF links, don’t miss Wombling Along from last week. Plus, I stumbled across more link round ups! Pages Unbound has a list of ten posts that caught their eye during the last month.

Art recs: autumn spirits by JuliArtWorld; Afanc by Aled Thompson; “robin” and “sparkling” by Jessica Elena; A garden of eels by BeeSky; creatures at the waterfall by Mark Boardman; cats in sweaters and hoodies by Joy; adventurer and familiar portrait by shafer brown; shark stamps by Norin

Outro

This week, my emotional support fanfiction archive had downtime (shoutout to AO3 coders/sysadmins, who definitely had it worse than all of us) and I was forced to contemplate the universe.

After a few minutes, I instead opted to start organizing my DVD and Blu-Ray collection. I realized I still remember all the words to the Rainbow Brite movie song. I come by my love of robots and machine intelligences honestly, but of course I also managed to make it a horse girl thing at the same time for maximum nerdery.

That’s it for this week! Have an excellent weekend (and forward this email to anyone who needs to read Finder by Suzanne Palmer). — Renay