Hey!

It’s been a slow week since the service I use as an external brain had a Domain Renewal Incident and my main working days were lost to the “server cannot be found” gods. However, we press on!

Hello to all the new subscribers and welcome to the ✨ Special Interest Zone ✨. I hope you find something great to read. Onward for lots of reviews, awards, and book commentary! :D

A-Side

Clarke Award 2026 - my shortlist and reading
This is a huge post about Gareth’s Clarke reading that I stumbled across. If you’re into Clarke commentary, you’ll find something interesting here in the reactions to the books that were read. For me, I appreciate the way the loose essay takes us through the books chosen for their personal shortlist and why they thoughts those books in particular would be a good representation of the year. When books I know show up, I gain a new perspective on them (I want to reread Slow Gods now with an eye toward human connection).

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
I haven’t read Dungeon Crawler Carl, but it’s only a matter of time before I brush aside all the critical reviews from folks I trust and read it (subtext: I want to be able to chat with Roseanna about it). This is a negative review! If negative reviews of books you like will hurt your feelings, please don’t read it and also don’t go be mean to anyone I link to (ever, but especially here). The review was, as I expected from Womble’s Bluesky commentary, starkly critical. It’s on par with what all the other negative reviews I’ve seen have said, but the reaction was fascinating because everyone is talking about “the books” when Womble was only talking about the one book he read. The text is, after all, the text. I was flagged to this pro-Dungeon Crawler Carl thread by Eddie Clark, then later read Naseem Jamnia’s thoughts; they reference both Womble’s review and Eddie’s thread. There’s a lot to think about re: who gets multiple chances to be a mediocre storyteller, but also about publishing and how they’ve abandoned the midlist to go hunting for pull-to-publish fanfic or popular indie books in series that don’t get to go through much, if any, developmental editing. Camestros Felapton had some good thoughts that I agree with around the discussion, too. Asking the weakest book in a series to stand for the whole series is a disservice to the book and the award in question. I have some nebulous thoughts about financial success and critical success and how the former makes some fans want the latter, which maybe I’ll be able to build on after I read the book.

Reviews/Discussions

The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated by Ranya Abdelrahman & Sawad Hussain (Hache Pueyo @ Reactor)
Bromantasy by Máire Roche (Alex Brown @ Locus)
The Captain’s Daughter by Peter F. Hamilton (Mark Yon @ SFF World)
The Coldfire Trilogy by C.S. Friedman (Niko’s Book Reviews)
The Diploids by Katherine MacLean (Brian Collins @ SFF Remembrance)
Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh (Hugo, Girl Podcast)
Dune by Frank Herbert (Hugo History Podcast)
A Hole in the Sky by Peter F. Hamilton (Jacqueline Nyathi @ Harare Review of Books)
Ignore All Previous Instructions by Ada Hoffmann (Bonnie @ Red Headed Femme)
Kill All Wizards by Jedediah Berry (Elias @ Bar Cart Bookshelf)
The Iron Garden Sutra by A.D. Sui (Ian Mond)
The Maiden and Her Monster by Maddie Martinez (Bailey)
Mortedant’s Peril by R.J. Barker (Womble @ Runalong the Shelves)
Nonesuch by Francis Spufford (Abigail Nussbaum @ Ancillary Review of Books)
Nonesuch by Francis Spufford (Trish Matson @ Skiffy and Fanty)
Nonesuch by Francis Spufford (Gary K. Wolfe @ Locus)
Ode To The Half Broken by Suzanne Palmer (An Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog)
Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer (Paul Di Filippo @ Locus)
On the Calculation of Volume IV by Solvej Balle, translated by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell (Roseanna Pendlebury @ A Reader of Else)
Radiant Star by Ann Leckie (David Rodriguez @ Strakul’s Thoughts)
Red Sword by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur (Akankshya Abismruta @ Strange Horizons)
The Redemption Center is Closed on Sundays by Andrea Hairston (Bruce J. Krajewski @ Ancillary Review of Books)
The Republic of Memory by Mahmud El Sayed (Tar Vol on)
The Republic of Memory by Mahmud El Sayed (Bill Capossere @ FanLit)
Slow Gods by Claire North (Dina @ SFF Book Reviews)
Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner (A Meal of Thorns Podcast)
Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim (Becky’s Book Blog)

B-Side

As Hugo Award season continues, more reviews are cropping up. There’s reviews of A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett, The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson, The Shattering Peace by John Scalzi, The Orb of Cairado by Katherine Addison, and two reviews of Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz at Pixelated Geek and SFF Insiders. Nicholas Whyte talked about his Best Novella choices. Dina discussed her Best Novel ranking and their folks at Narrated Podcast (plus guest) shared their own rankings, too. The diversity of ranking was neat. Please don’t ask me about my ranking yet. 👀

There’s a new award for paid speculative fiction magazines, The InkMark. The Mythopoeic finalists, for fantasy literature, were announced. Finally, the Sidewise Awards, which recognize alternate history, announced their finalists, too.

Rachel Cordasco, creator of SF in Translation was interviewed about translated speculative fiction. Millie Abecassis, founder of #SmallPitch, will start collecting news about releases of books from small presses in science fiction, fantasy, and horror in July. Alasdair Stuart, a Hugo finalist as a part of the Escape Pod team (also the writer of The Full Lid!), was over on Reddit for an Ask Me Anything.

Most of my reading this this week was catching up on all my Tolkien essays. Shelved by Genre had another episode on sections of The Two Towers. Roseanna finished up her read through/discussion of The Two Towers, and although she talks about not wanting to compare the books and films too much, I do like when she notes the differences where the books handled things better and why. Abigail discusses “The Council of Elrond”: Redux and “The Ring Goes South”. I like how reading/listening to all these different takes adds a level of depth to the experience, almost like a literary kaleidoscope.

Alex Brown shares their must-read short fiction for May. V. Astor Solomon has their weekly short fiction recs. Joachim Boaz reviewed “Madness from Mars” and “Hermit of Mars” by Clifford D. Simak. Maria Haskins has write a up and recs for stories from Diabolical Plots, Bourbon Penn, and Escape Pod. Tar Vol on did reviews and recs for GigaNotoSaurus and the June issue of Clarkesworld, and A.C. Wise covered the March issue of Clarkesworld. FIYAH shared the cover for Issue #39 and the table of contents. The Eye of Levithan by M.A. Carrick will be out soon, and there’s a prequel novelette in Adventitious, “Non Plus Ultra”.

I’m mildly interested in the Kingdom Hearts franchise still, even though the lore got too deep for me around Chain of Memories. Kingdom Hearts fandom is a full time job, truly. The Kingdom Hearts IV teaser trailer looks fun, but the most fun can be had by reading the comments on the video. The Gatto trailer looks charm, if you still like Pixar and/or cats. I watched the Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer and realized I’m at least one Spider-Man behind. People who can keep up with Marvel are impressive and I salute them.

Meg Elison will be on tour for her new book, Foundling Fathers. Conversation Tree Press will be releasing special editions of The Expanse by James S.A. Corey. Paul Semel has interviews with Tessa Gratton, author of The Shape Of Monsters and T.K. Rex, author of The Wildcraft Drones. I also went back and read this Big Idea column from T.K. Rex about the book. Ask a Manager has a very fun interview with Natalie Zina Walschots, author of Hench and Villain. At The Fantasy Hive, they have an interview with Lex Croucher, author of The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones.

To see even more SFF links, check out Wombling Along!

Art recs: All is Quiet Under the Moon by Laura Siadak; me too, mothman by ascalaphid; c o s m o s by Natasha Tara Petrović; elf girl by zurera; pride goat by reywolfe; Handouts by Dominique Ramsey; good enough by Bree Lundberg; a trans knight by viktor aleksander

Outro

This week I wrote about one of my new favorite books for the year so far, The Language of Liars by S.L. Huang. It’s stuffed to the brim with spoilers, so if you want to read my Intensely Fond and speculative thoughts and haven’t read the book yet, it’s out now! It’s only 175 pages!

Recent Reading:

I didn’t read anything. Instead I started Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 with my partner, became obsessed with learning to parry, and got big mad at several plot developments and the mimes. Those damn mimes. This game feels like if Final Fantasy IX and Final Fantasy XII had a baby and then that baby got mentored in the fighting arts by Final Fantasy X and an annoyed mime. — Renay