Sometimes what you really need is a team of clever kids (or young adults, I guess) to solve a crime—so today’s stack features a couple different Scooby Gangs figuring out thefts, murders, and one magical curse. Let’s check out these meddling kids!

Theft of the Ruby Lotus by Sayantani Dasgupta

Ria Bailey is not happy. Her mom had been acting kind of shady before she apparently resigned her Metropolitan Museum job and made plans to move them to a small town in Germany. And now a ruby—stolen from the hilt of a famous Indian sword at the museum—has turned up in the mail, addressed to Ria’s mom. Was her mom involved in some sort of art heist?

Ria and her two friends—tech whiz Miracle and super-activist Annie—conveniently have an overnight field trip to the museum, so they make plans to break into the East Asian wing, somehow return the jewel to the display, and maybe get her mom’s job back so she doesn’t have to move to Germany. But, of course, things aren’t that easy: along the way they run into some scary-looking women (also part of the art thieves ring?), a really cute boy (can they trust him?), and the famous tech billionaire whose company is in charge of all the museum’s security systems.

The story overall was fun, but it felt pretty obvious to me (as an adult, at least) that Ria, who narrates the story and tells a lot of her inner thoughts, was frequently jumping to conclusions about things. When the ruby arrives in the mail, she immediately assumes her mom is a criminal. When she sees this cute boy outside the museum, her heart goes all gooey—well, she’s kind of all over the place when it comes to him—and in each encounter she makes a lot of assumptions about who people are and what they’re up to. In the end, the three girls do manage to save the day, but it’s almost despite being quite wrong about nearly everyone they encounter!

Dasgupta says in the afterword that the story was inspired by The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, a classic tale involving two kids hiding out in the Metropolitan Museum to solve a mystery, but set in the modern day. Theft of the Ruby Lotus also has a very diverse cast, not only the kids themselves but the many people they encounter in New York City as they try to get to the bottom of the mystery. It’s a big celebration of immigrant culture, and one of the story’s central themes is the repatriation of artwork and cultural artifacts.

Arcana: The Cursed Fate by Sam Prentice-Jones

Arcana: The Cursed Fate is the sequel to Arcana: The Lost Heirs, which I wrote about in this Stack Overflow column last year. (It’s not out until June, but since The Lost Heirs ended on a cliffhanger, I couldn’t wait to read it as soon as the advance copy arrived!) It’s about an organization of witches called the Arcana, and in particular a group of five young witches who are trying to figure out a curse that seems to have been triggered when Eli, the fifth one, was found in a small town and invited to join the Arcana. The higher-ups seem to know more, but they’ve left the younger witches in the dark.

The second book picks up the pace, and we soon find out what caused the curse, and this magical Scooby Gang sets about figuring out how to break it. It gets into some of the history of the Arcana—some of which was wiped out and hidden—and dives into generational trauma and grief, as well as discovering things about themselves and their families that they didn’t want to know.

It’s interesting that the second book is quite a bit shorter than the first one. I don’t feel like I see that very often. While The Cursed Fate doesn’t feel too rushed, I did wish I’d gotten to spend a little more time in this world again, because I really love Prentice-Jones’ illustration style. It seems like the first book was just longer to reach a particular cliffhanger as a break, but overall the two books together tell a good story.

It does feel like this story is over, though it concludes with “The End… For Now” so that leaves the door open for more Arcana in the future.

The Escape Game by Marissa Meyer & Tamara Moss

Welcome to fifth season of The Escape Game, a reality TV series where teams of teenagers compete to solve escape rooms. Somehow the show is continuing, despite the fact that season four ended with a murder—Alicia Angelos, one of the competitors, was found in a prop coffin in the finale room. Everyone knows, of course, that the culprit was her sister (and fellow competitor) Sierra … who also happens to be back for season five. Nothing like some drama to drum up rating, right?

Sierra’s been placed on a team with Carter, a math whiz and well-known streamer who hides behind her cartoon avatar but is much less confident in real life; Adi, wordsmith extraordinaire who just wants to get away from his overbearing, Hollywood has-been mother; and Beck, a synesthete escape room connoisseur who is after more than just the prize money. You get some of the usual new team conflicts as the four get to know each other and muddle their way through the first couple events (and hope Sierra doesn’t murder them in their sleep), but it’s made clear pretty early that Sierra is not the killer, and what she’s really after in this season is justice for her sister.

She’s not alone—strange clues start turning up in the puzzles, too, things that hint at the murder and promise to reveal more. Somebody has information, but who is it? If Sierra and her team are going to solve the murder, they need to make it to the finale of the show.

I love escape rooms, so the theme of this one was a lot of fun, and there are plenty of puzzles that the kids get to solve over the course of the book. Some of them (particularly some of the word puzzles) are ones that you can try to figure out before the answer is revealed, but there are also plenty that are just described as the teams work through them as part of the story. The book also leans heavily into some Hollywood tropes: the cutthroat producer who’s willing to do whatever it takes to keep the show running, the charming young host who doesn’t understand any of the puzzles but puts on a good show, and the revered Game Master who may not be as awesome as everyone thinks he is.

Although the murder mystery is solved by the end of the book, there’s more in store: throughout the book we learn about Victor Cunningham, a treasure hunter who has turned his estate into a puzzle paradise. It turns out that a couple of the characters have connections to Victor, and it seems like in a future book we’ll get to see those connections start to play out.

Puzzleheart by Jenn Reese

This one’s a little less of a Scooby Gang—there are just two kids—but it ties into the last one because of the escape rooms and puzzles. Eklund’s Puzzle House was built as a bed-and-breakfast full of tricky puzzles, but it never opened because Herbert Eklund passed away before it was completed, at which point Savannah Eklund swore off puzzles and even sent her son Grayson away to live with his aunt. Many years later, the house is in disrepair and Savannah is getting ready to sell it; Grayson’s kid Perigee has finagled a visit to the house, hoping to patch things up between his dad and grandmother, but also to get a chance to see this house that their dad has been telling them about their whole lives.

I’d seen in the description of the book that the house was a character in Puzzleheart, but I assumed that was metaphorically, like the way people say New York City is practically a character in certain movies. Nope: the House appears to be sentient, and gets its own interlude chapters where we get to find out a little bit what it’s thinking. The House, against Savannah’s wishes, reveals its first puzzle to Perigee and challenges them to start solving. Perigee is joined by Lily, another kid who happens to be staying at the house (with a bunch of kittens) while her mom is doing search-and-rescue work in the surrounding mountains.

I’m only about halfway through the book so far, but I’m enjoying the mystery. What happened to Herbert Eklund, and why did Savannah give up on puzzles? What happened between her and Grayson, who grew up while his dad was building the house? The house itself has hidden panels and wondrous rooms, aside from being essentially alive, so I’m eager to see more of that as Perigee and Lily explore it.

Disclosure: I received review copies of these books. Affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support my writing and independent booksellers!

When a new Patrick Ness book comes along, it’s always exciting. When that book is in the Chaos Walking universe, it’s more thrilling still.

Enter Piper at the Gates of Dusk, a new book by Patrick Ness, set, yes, you’ve guessed it, in the Chaos Walking universe.

Do I need to read the Chaos Walking books first?

Probably.

I read the Chaos Walking books when they first came out. I had very small children at the time, and while I definitely enjoyed them, my parent brain hasn’t allowed me to retain very much information about them. Indeed, reading The Piper at the Gates of Dusk has me wondering whether I can find time in the schedule to reread them. – Answer, probably not, but I feel like I should do it anyway.

The key thing is that I remembered many of the key concepts, particularly those outlined in the Knife of Never Letting Go. The plot backfill in The Piper is fine; you don’t need to remember all (any) of the details for the original trilogy’s storyline, but I do think that familiarity with the Chaos Walking world will be beneficial.

What Is Piper at the Gates of Dusk?

 My proof copy doesn’t mention that this is the first book in a new series. This is definitely something to be aware of, because as the book hurtled towards its final pages, it became increasingly clear that the story wasn’t going to be complete. It ends with quite the cliffhanger.

Piper introduces us to two new characters, Max and Ben, the sons of Todd and Viola.

Life has carried on with an uneasy peace between the humans and “The Land,” but there are factions within the human enclave that are agitating for a less cooperative arrangement. This gives rise to one thread of the novel, which is deftly handled by Ness.

The power of silken words and manipulation. The use of lies, the stoking of fears and utilising misinformation to “other” a group of people for political gain. In this case, the Land.

Much of this fake news centres around the strange dreams that all of the children have been having. All of the children, that is, except Ben.

The “Noise” from the Chaos Walking books has been eradicated from the men of the world, and yet the children have started hearing it again in their dreams.

If that wasn’t enough, huge fiery “gods” have started appearing in the wilderness and abducting children; snatching them, jumping into water and disappearing.

The Land have also discovered that an asteroid (spaceship) is heading towards the planet too. Are the two things connected? Through the ancient dreamscape of The Land, we learn that they are, but what exactly are they here for, and where are the children going?

Why Read Piper at the Gates of Dusk?

If you would like to pick up a copy of Piper at the Gates of Dusk, you can do so here in the US and here, in the UK. (Affiliate Links)

If you enjoyed this review, check out my other book reviews, here. This review also appears (in a slightly different form) on my own blog PotsandPlots.

I received a copy of this book in order to write this review.

Today’s stack: a couple kids’ series about saving the world!

InvestiGators: Weather or Not by John Patrick Green
Agents of S.U.I.T.: Sew Much Trouble by John Patrick Green with Christopher Hastings and Pat Lewis

The world of S.U.I.T. (that’s Special Undercover Investigation Teams) continues to delight with these two books. InvestiGators is the original series, with alligator partners Mango and Brash chasing down ridiculous villains. Agents of S.U.I.T. is the spin-off series, giving some of the secondary characters from InvestiGators their time to shine.

In Weather or Not (due out in June), the city is experiencing two unusual phenomena: an unseasonably warm winter, and all the water in the taps has been replaced with … milk? Oh, and Brash has a toothache, which is a roundabout way of bringing up his former crocodile partner Daryl, who has appeared in previous books as a crackerdile, a waffledile, a rockodile, and more. Hmm, why would the reader need to be reminded about Daryl, I wonder? As usual, Mango and Brash manage to save the day with a mix of high tech gadgets and low-tech gags.

Sew Much Trouble puts the spotlight on Sven Septapus (an octopus with only 7 arms), who is usually behind the scenes at S.U.I.T. He’s the Q of the organization, putting all that nifty tech into the vests (and other clothing) for the field agents. But there’s been a mysterious theft, and Sven gets sent to investigate his favorite reality TV show, Sew You Think You Can Sew. A subplot involves a falling out between the badger agents Bongo and Marsha, who each get paired up with other agents (and of course learn an important lesson about appreciating each other).

My daughter and I have read all of these books so far; they’re incredibly silly and just jam-packed with puns, wordplay, and visual gags, many of which are probably there for the adult readers. There’s a throwaway gag about a comic strip called “Carfield” drawn by Dave Jimbus. One of the sewing contestants is a duck named Jason Waterfowls … to set up a joke 40 pages later: “Don’t go, Jason Waterfowls!” Oh, and Sew Much Trouble also throws in some references to The Emperor’s New Clothes, a classic tale that I’m partial to myself, so that was a little bonus.

If you like secret agents and absurd humor, these are definitely worth investigating for yourself!

The Curie Society series, created by Heather Einhorn and Adam Staffaroni

I wrote about the first book in this series back in 2023; it’s about a secret society started by Marie Curie to advance women in science, and the series centers on three first-year college students who have been recruited for their talents. In the first book (written by Janet Harvey and illustrated by Sonia Liao), they learn about an organization called Eris that includes women who were formerly part of the Curie Society but felt it did not go far enough to achieve its aims.

Eris Eternal is the second book (written by Anne Toole and illustrated by Sonia Liao) and takes the trio to Paris for Fashion Week. A prominent tech incubator has been threatened leading up to her launch: was it one of the women that she has been sponsoring, or is there somebody else behind the sabotage? The plot weaves together material science, fashion, and biotech, and the team has to figure out what Eris is up to. They’ve mostly been apart for the summer and are learning to work together again. Simone, the youngest, bristles at feeling like she can’t be trusted to work independently, while Maya has been feeling alone and struggles to reconnect.

The third book, Game of Code (written by Barbara Perez Marquez and illustrated by Sonia Liao), centers on a big tech conference in Madrid; the trio has been recruited to help the local team with their presentation. But Taj has her mind on other things: she plays an online combat game with her friends back home, and the big tournament just happens to be in Madrid at the same time. She feels torn between two worlds—but then it turns out there are some unusual links between the two events.

Aside from featuring a lot of female characters involved in various scientific fields, each book also has a section at the back that dives a little more into the real-world science and scientist. The first book includes a section with brief biographies of many contemporary women in science. The second has two mini-comics, a biography of Marie Curie and a look at biofabrication with Dr. Ritu Raman from MIT. The third also has two mini-comics, one that highlights three different women (Ada Lovelace, Fei-Fei Li, and Katherine Johnson), and then a chat about AI with MIT’s Lalana Kagal. (I wasn’t fully on board with that last one, though—Kagal does mention the need for fact-checking and safeguards, but otherwise mostly avoids talking about the harms that AI and those selling it are currently doing.)

I enjoyed this series and its focus; there’s a good mix of action and science (though some of it is not real … yet). The interpersonal drama is expected, but also feels a little contrived. Will they need to learn to work together and trust each other every time? It felt like they’d figured some things out by Book Two, but then in Book Three the tension ratcheted up again. Overall, though, this is a cool series that could spark an interest in science for young readers.

Doña Quixote written by Rey Terciero, illustrated by Monica M. Magaña

Lucia Castillo grew up hearing stories from her grandfather about fighting monsters, but the rest of the town called him Abuelo Loco and just thought he was a crazy old man wearing a knight helmet. Years later, Lucia finds her grandfather’s helmet and discovers that when she wears it, she can see the world of magical beings, including a shape-shifting mayor who seems to be up to something. With her best friend Sandro, Lucia charges into battle—but soon learns that being a hero isn’t always easy to figure out. The first book, Rise of the Knight, is about Lucia’s discovery of the magical world (and the trouble she gets into while trying to be a knight).

By the second book, Flight of the Witch, Lucia is the hero of the town, and the townspeople are constantly asking her for help. Nobody seems to appreciate the role that Sandro plays—not even Lucia herself. She thinks that being a hero is solely her responsibility, but it’s hard to save the world and keep up with your homework. In this book, the townsfolk are losing their prized possessions to thieving owls, and Lucia tracks them down to discover a coven of witches. But she can’t face them alone.

The stories are, of course, based on Don Quixote; Sandro is unable to see any of the monsters that Lucia faces, but he’s smart and is able to strategize. Meanwhile, Lucia is impulsive and leaps to attack without thinking through things first, which often gets her into trouble. The second book in particular is where she really starts to learn her lesson about relying on others, especially Sandro. (Appreciating your teammates seems to be a big theme in today’s books!) In the story, Lucia is even descended from Don Quixote himself, which is why the helmet works for her. In addition to the ties to Don Quixote, these books also include a wide variety of monsters and creatures from Latin American cultures.

Animorphs: The Invasion by K. A. Applegate

I was in college when the first Animorphs book was published, so I didn’t read them at the time, and my own kids just never got into them. Since then, I’ve read a little about what Katherine Applegate said about the ending of the series—that it’s not the typical happy ending you’d get from a kids’ book series because she didn’t want to glorify war—and that made me a little curious about it. Well, this year is the 30th anniversary of the start of the series, so Scholastic is re-issuing the books (with new cover art that looks a bit less creepy than the ones I remember seeing at the bookstore three decades ago), and I read the first book.

Here’s the premise, in case you didn’t know already: a couple of kids encounter a dying alien, who tells them that another alien species (the Yeerks) have invaded Earth. They’re slug-like beings that get into your brain and control you, which means that anyone could actually be a Yeerk. Before dying, the alien gives them the ability to morph: they can acquire the DNA of any animal they encounter and then turn into it. But these are teenagers. How are they supposed to stop an alien invasion? Who can they tell, if authority figures might actually be the enemy? And how do they use these morphing powers to fight the invasion?

The book is pretty short and is a fast read, and things happen fast. I was a bit surprised by how intense it gets, both in terms of physical violence as well as the emotional aspects: one character soon discovers that a loved one is a Yeerk. Another spends too long in animal form—and is now permanently stuck. In the first book! Presumably there are going to be some more kids who can transform (since I can’t imagine only four teenagers are going to stop an alien army) but I guess we’ll find out.

Disclosure: I received review copies of these titles. Affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support my writing and independent booksellers.

I’ve got a few books today that have some odd threads that connect some of them, though there isn’t a single topic that encompasses them all. Two of them involve pandemics, and some involve parenthood—in particular, a couple have to do with artificial parents.

Nobody’s Baby by Olivia Waite

I really loved the first book in this series, Murder by Memory, which made it into my recent stack about AI. I was a little late to reading that one, but the follow-up was just published this month, and when it arrived I knew it was one I wanted to dive into right away. Both books are slim novellas and make for a quick, fun read.

Dorothy Gentleman is a detective on the Fairweather, an interstellar ship that has some interesting features, among which is that the people on board are effectively immortal (barring the complex murder plot in the first book): they get their memories backed up regularly, and then are decanted into new, adult bodies when their current bodies age or fail. That, and the fact that the lab-grown bodies are unable to reproduce, keeps the population steady until they eventually make planetfall, at which point they will be able to procreate but will also die naturally.

But, mysteriously, a baby has turned up on the ship, and Dorothy has her hands full trying to figure out who the parents are, how it was even possible, and why the baby was left on her nephew’s doorstep in a basket. The ship’s AI does not feature quite as heavily in this one, but we do get some other interesting future-tech in the form of flickers: people are able to project memories using a special helmet gizmo, and this has turned into a form of entertainment as some have perfected the techniques of making up their own stories to project like movies.

I enjoyed this one, both for the unexpected paths that the story takes while Dorothy chases down the baby’s origin, and for the different ways that various characters react to the first baby they’ve encountered in 300 years. (I certainly don’t miss the days of diapers and bottles and screaming fits!)

Severance by Ling Ma

I’ll start by saying that this book has nothing to do with the Severance TV show, though there are parts of the book that deal with the everyday drudgery of an office job. I’d seen this at the bookstore and the title caught my attention because I’m a fan of the show, but then I was really curious about the “end of the world” plot, so I bought a copy.

Much of the story takes place in New York City, where Candace Chen works for a company that coordinates printing and manufacturing in China for book publishers; she’s in the Bible division, but she would really love to be an Art Girl, the always-stylish women in charge of the fancy art books. Then comes the news that there’s a strange virus originating in China, and things start to shift. It starts with N95 masks in the office, but then eventually things are mostly remote, with a skeleton crew (including Candace) continuing to work in person, in part to keep up appearances at the office. As the virus spreads, New York City becomes a ghost town—those who didn’t succumb to the virus left the city—but Candace persists, returning to the office day after day long after everyone else has abandoned it.

There were so many parts of this book that really took me back to 2020, the way our world was transformed by COVID and particularly in the early days when everything was unknown. What caused it? How did it spread? How do you keep yourself safe? And then there’s the way that Candace keeps going about her daily routines even as everything falls apart around her, trying to pretend that things are normal when they clearly aren’t.

What’s especially striking, then, is finding out that this book was published in 2018, well before any of us had heard of COVID. In the book, the pandemic hits in 2011, and it incorporates events like the Occupy Wall Street protests, as well as the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

Eventually, though, Candace has to leave the city, and the other sections of the book are about the small band of survivors that she falls in with. They appear to be immune to the disease, and they’re traveling to Chicago, where the group’s default leader says he has a Facility where they’ll be able to live safely. But although he seems to have some decent plans for how to survive in this changed world, he’s also a bit cult-like, with weird semi-religious philosophies. Candace stays with the group for survival, but gradually starts to realize she needs to find a way out.

There are some shades of Station Eleven here—another pandemic that wipes out most of the world’s population, a small group of survivors, a cult leader figure. The chapters about the post-collapse world are interwoven with chapters about Candace’s life in the before-times and during the slow disintegration of the city, making for a jarring juxtaposition between the mundane and the surreal.

The Mother Code by Carole Stivers

I don’t often cover the books that I’m deciding not to read, but this one really fit some of the categories, while also failing on other points. The story takes place in the 2050s and 2060s, jumping back and forth between a pandemic that apparently wipes out most of the world’s population. I was particularly interested in this one because it’s about a pandemic but was published in 2020, which means the book was written prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this case, it’s the result of a bioweapon gone wrong: the US military unleashed a genetically engineered nanostructure that was supposed to kill some entrenched insurgents and then dissipate. Instead, it found a way to reproduce and spread.

It’s also about AI and robots, because there’s a team tasked with building robots that can incubate and raise the modified humans who can survive the pandemic. The scenes in the 2060s show these young kids, each raised on their own by a robot, as they try to find each other and figure out what has happened to the world. The blurb on the back says that there are some people who survived and this sets up a conflict when they decide the mother robots must be destroyed.

I am somewhat curious where the plot is going, but I just kept running into things that bothered me: the descriptions of some of the non-white characters just veer into stereotypes. Of course the scientist with the slight Mexican accent reminds this other guy of farmhands. Of course the very appearance of this Pakistani makes the army guy think of insurgents that he fought who smell of “cumin mixed with sweat.” I just rolled my eyes through that, but then I could see the story was setting up a romance between a military officer and his subordinate, which seemed like a red flag. And then we had another guy who regretted that he didn’t start dating this woman when she was still his student, and I’d had enough.

Oasis by Guojing

Guojing had previously illustrated a wordless book called The Only Child inspired by China’s one-child policy. This graphic novel is inspired by the “left-behind children” who live in rural areas while their parents look for work in the cities. Two siblings, known only as JieJie (older sister) and DiDi (younger brother) live in a desert, making the long trek to a phone booth for brief, scheduled conversations with their mother, who works in a factory assembly line making robots.

When the kids find a broken, discarded robot in the dump, they take it home and JieJie is able to get it started up. Didi makes a wish for a mom, and the robot turns on its “mother mode” and starts to care for them. When their mother makes a rare trip home and discovers this robot with her kids, it leads to conflict and hurt feelings that they must figure out as a family.

This isn’t the first time I’ve read a story about robotic parents—there’s Muthr in the WondLa series, or more recently there was Roger in Operation Bounce House. Muthr was designed to be a mom, but we’re also seeing a lot of repurposed bots like Roger. In The Mother Code, the robots were originally for more industrial purposes like exploration and mining, and I got the sense that that’s the case here in Oasis as well, though at least the bot did have a “mother mode” programmed into it.

Like The Only Child, the illustrations are in black and white with only occasional touches of color, and they really convey the loneliness of the barren land that the kids inhabit. There is a little bit of “AI can solve your problems” magic that I didn’t feel was entirely convincing, but I still enjoyed the story nonetheless.

Bookshop.org Discount!

I’ve been using Bookshop.org for my book links for a while now as an alternative to Amazon. Purchases are fulfilled by independent booksellers, and I get a small percentage of sales through these links as well, so if you want to support non-billionaires, this is one place to get your books!

Bookshop.org had a little promotional deal recently, and I have a 15% off coupon code for the books in this themed list: Love and Time Travel. These are all books I’ve covered in the past year or so about time travel with some romance thrown in (or vice versa!). Use code BSO15 at checkout—the code is valid until April 1, 2026. (It excludes eBooks.) Thanks for reading!

Disclosure: I received review copies of the titles in today’s column except Severance, which I purchased myself.

Michael Moorcock’s classic Eternal Champion, Hawkmoon, has been reworked into a new graphic novel series by Jérmôme Le Gris and Benoît Dellac. Two volumes are currently available: The Black Jewel and The Battle of Kamarg, which publishes as this review goes live.

The books rework the action from the middle section of the first History of the Runestaff novel, the Jewel in the Skull. Hawkmoon was my favourite Moorcock character when I read the novels back in the early 90s, so I was keen to see what this adaptation would bring.

What Is Hawkmoon?

Despite remembering that I very much enjoyed the Runestaff books, I’m surprised by just how much I’d forgotten about them. So much so, I have gone back and read Jewel in the Skull, so that I can validly compare the original novel and these two volumes of Hawkmoon.

Dorian Hawkmoon lives in a world with a Europe that resembles ours; for a start, he’s the Duke of Köln. This mythical Europe has fantastical engines, eldritch sorcery, and a diabolical evil empire called Granbretan (capital Londra). As the novel opens, Hawkmoon is captured by General Meliadus, a member of the Granbretan high command.

Meladius has also fallen out with Count Brass, the formidable warlord and ruler of Kamarg. Meliadus wishes to take Kamarg, humble Count Brass, and marry his daughter Yisselda. He swears on the mythical Runestaff that he will reduce Kamarg to ash – but while the Runestaff will be important in later instalments, it barely features in these first two volumes.

Meliadus sends Hawkmoon to capture Yisselda and return with her, so that they can marry. How can he compel Hawkmoon, a sworn enemy, to do so? By use of the infernal black jewel that the sorcerers of Granbretan have embedded in Hawkmoon’s head. This allows the captains of Granbretan to see everything Hawkmoon is doing. If he puts a foot wrong, they can release the power of the jewel to kill him by dissolving his brain.

The bulk of these books follows what happens once Meladius has released the captive Hawkmoon, and he travels to Kamarg with treachery, if not in his heart, then at least at the center of his forehead.

Why Read Hawkmoon?

These adaptations are fairly faithful to the original source material, though I was surprised by how much, despite The Jewel in the Skull being a short novel, is left out by the graphic novels. It highlights the differences between the two media. If The Jewel in the Skull was so light on detail, it would be a bland novel. What The Black Jewel and The Battle of Kamarg have, of course, are illustrations.

The artwork in these books is excellent. It fits the mood of Moorcock’s books perfectly. There are a few minor plot differences, more in how things happen, rather than what happens. The story is substantively the same, with some changes made, I assume to make the action more decisive, and the decision points more immediate. The tone of the graphic novels very much befits the original novel, the alternate-world and what we would now call “grimdark” elements are all there.

Mostly, the text is fine, the story whips along. My one small complaint is that both books use the phrase “Raised to the ground” when it should be “razed.” I’d have let one use pass without comment, but two felt like it needed to be mentioned.

I enjoyed reading both the novel and the graphic interpretations. I can’t wait to look forward to reading more. The Battle of Kamarg ends at the same point as The Jewel in the Skull’s Book 2. I assume in the next volume of Hawkmoon we will meet Oladahn and the Knight of Jet and Gold (who does make a sneaky appearance in the graphic novels, so look out for him). I am both looking forward to more Hawkmoon, and reacquainting myself with yet more Moorcock in the second part of the History of the Runestaff – The Mad God’s Amulet.

If you’re a fan of Dorian Hawkmoon, I think you’ll enjoy these new interpretations. If you’ve never read any, then whether you pick these novels, graphic or prose, you’re in for a treat.

If you would like to pick up a copy of The Black Jewel, you can do so here in the US and here, in the UK. You’ll find part 2, The Battle of Kamarg, here, in the US and here, in the UK. (Affiliate Links)

If you enjoyed this review, check out my other book reviews, here. 

I received a copy of this book in order to write this review.

This is a mixed bag of different takes, titles, science and poetry, my favorite type of mix up!

Let’s start with early readers:

Chess for Babies by Levy Rozman (Author)

A brand new baby nephew has entered my life, and his dad loves chess. I had to check this book out!

How do you explain chess to babies, you might ask? This simple, yet adorable board book begins with the basics: the names of the pieces, how they move, and what it takes to win.

(You’ll understand that part better when you grow up, baby).

The illustrations are on soft pastels, and the centerpiece is the chessboard in bold black and white squares. Baby can trace each of the pieces’ movements on the chessboard and get to know and recognize each piece.

A lovely move to get to know how chess works!

Chess for Babies is available since March 03, 2026,
Publisher: Ten Speed Young Readers
Pages: 20/ Board book
EAN/UPC: 9780593837832

Up next, a book about flowers:

Flowers for Mama Deborah Freedman (Author)

Mother’s Day is fast approaching, and all kittens are preparing gifts for their sweet Mama Cat. The theme is flowers. Some kittens are very good at drawing them and stamping them. Others stitch them, and one even thinks up a song about them.

However, Oleander wants a real flower, so he plants a seed, hoping for it to spring on time. The surprise is Mama’s response to the lack of flowers thereof, because, you may be surprised to know, flowers need time to sprout! I loved the illustrations on this one, especially the puzzled face of hopeful Oleander.

Flowers for Mama will be available on March 31, 2026.
Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers
Pages: 40 Hardcover
EAN/UPC: 9780593695494

Now for a pet adoption story:

My Someone. A Pet Adoption Story by Yuko Torii (Author)

I have to say that the take is not as nuanced as I would like (I can’t recommend The Guard Dog story by Patrick McDonnell enough), but the illustrations are lovely and told from the dog’s point of view.

Hungry, alone, and cold, he wanders the streets and wishes for a special someone.

The little stray dog will get caught by animal rescue, cleaned, vaccinated, and scrubbed. And boy, does he get to have fun when he then gets adopted!

My Someone is on sale since March 03, 2026.

Published by Rise x Penguin Workshop
Hardcover | Pages: 32
ISBN: 9780593887271

Up next, a beautiful poem adaptation:

Goldfinches Mary Oliver (Author), Melissa Sweet (Illustrated by)

I am so grateful for Mary Oliver, what a poet she is! Always attuned to the little, most important things.

This poem of hers about how the goldfinches prepare their nests is wonderful, and Melissa Sweet has done a tremendous job by making it look like a field notebook, an art sketchbook, a journal beset by beauty.

In it, the relationship between the goldfinches and the soft thistles is carefully observed.

In the fields we let them have— in the fields
we don’t want yet—
where thistles rise out of the marshlands of spring, and spring open— each bud a settlement of riches—
a coin of reddish fire— the finches
wait for midsummer, for the long days,
Mary Oliver

Goldfinches is be available since March 03, 2026.

Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers
Pages: 40 Hardcover
EAN/UPC: 9780593692417

Up next, a book about Greenland:

Seasons by the Lake. Adventures in Greenland by Naja Lund Aparico (Author), Alex Nees (Illustrated by)

Two Inuit siblings, Minik and Nuka, eagerly await seasons to unfold in their Greenland landscape. They play with everything that surrounds them and enjoy icebergs, crowberries in the spring, extremely long summers, and the curious and joyous custom of dime throwing, when grandparents celebrate their grandchildren’s achievements by throwing fistfuls of coins into the air.

Even the long, dark winter has its perks, as it allows Arsarnerit, Aurora Borealis, to shimmer above, when they sit by the fire and tell Inuit myths.

All seasons by the lake have something special and unique to each of them.

Seasons by the Lake is on sale since March 17, 2026.

Published by Dial Books
Hardback | Pages: 40
ISBN: 9780593695586

Up next, a famous legend:

The Children of the Sun. An Inca Legend Micaela Chirif (Author), Juan Palomino (Illustrated by), Lawrence Schimel (Translated by)

Bolivia and Peru share a legend brought by the Incas about how the mysterious first city came to be, how the gods created a man and a woman out of the waters of the lake, and sent them on a special quest to find the best place to start a brand new life.

Peruvian author Micaela Chirif does an outstanding job of retelling this classic story: Once created, the children of the Sun set out to find the perfect spot, and the people of the earth follow them.

I understand how Palomino might have wanted to steer away from traditional Inca paraphernalia and make it look like a far-off, small people walking into a barren land, but I felt that the illustrations lacked focus; the people were simply too far away!

The Incan empire once ruled western South America. They had lots of gold and extraordinary pottery and textiles, the purported amazing constructions, and created roads to be run on foot by the chasquis (swift messengers), some of which are still used to this day for hiking expeditions.

The Children of the Sun is on sale since March 31, 2026.

Published by Eerdmans Books for Young Readers
Hardcover | Pages:44
ISBN: 9780802856548

Now for an act of bravery:

Music of the Bells Anitha Rao-Robinson (Author), Chaaya Prabhat (Illustrated by)

Neela recently moved from India to the US. In her homeland, she used to dance Kathak–a classical dance that uses movement and bells attached to ankles to tell a story.

Now, her family has moved, and she goes to ballet classes, like the other kids in her school. This is a classic tale of loving the new but feeling homesick for what you used to do back home.

However, the annual showcase is fast approaching, and Neela decides to do a brave thing: introduce Kathak to her new friends. Her fear of them seeing it as strange shouldn’t have worried her, because they will love hearing the music of the bells!

Music of the Bells is on sale since March 17, 2026.

Published by Viking Books for Young Readers
Hardcover | Pages: 40
ISBN 9780593624371

Up next, fabulous creatures from around the world:

Fabulous Creatures. Legendary Animals from Around the World Cornelia Funke (Author), Anna Schmitt Funke (Translated by), Ruby Warnecke (Illustrated by)

Cornelia Funke and Ruby Warnecke have done a wonderful job rounding up some famous Western and Eastern beasts from traditional folktales.

To the unicorns and griffins from European lore, they add Thunderbirds from native America, giant Asian monsters such as the Barong, and some mysterious creatures you might have never encountered before, like the Tumu-Rai’i Fenua, a giant kraken from the Pacific.

Fabulous Creatures will be available since March 31, 2026.

Published by NorthSouth Books
Hardcover | Pages: 48
ISBN: 9780735845916

Finally, a graphic take on existential anguish:

How to Survive the End of the World. A Graphic Exploration of How to (Maybe) Avoid Extinction by Katy Doughty (Author)

I enjoyed this book, but kept thinking that you need a bit less fatalism for adolescents.

Let me explain: the questions about extinction are all valid, and the author is right, we can die off by a host of variables: earthquakes, volcanic activity, plagues, meteorite strikes, diseases, and even AI can finish us. Katy Doughty has done a great job mixing science, history, and the graphic novel to begin approaching these themes.

But something we encountered using a philosophical approach for children is that there is a big existential angst that follows suit, and that it is a difficult thing to absorb for them emotionally. If you feel that you are not important and play an important role in the Universe, you feel a sense of loss that is almost unbearable.

Global warming, alien invasion, how are we going to leave the worlds stage are all valid questions, and asking scientist hold surprising answers, some more connected to a logic that is not centered in us as human beings than others I personally enjoyed her musing about immortal bodies and evolving to something that might not even be recognizable as human, but kept thinking about how interconnectedness, validation, mutual support and harmony can define change beyond science.

We can survive together; there is hope at the end of the book, but the dry humor and fatalism of the different and increasingly horrific scenarios can be a bit daunting to sensible souls.

How to Survive the End of the World will be available since March 31, 2026.

Published by MITeen Press
Hardcover | Pages: 256
ISBN: 9781536232790

America as it Happened is an engaging and informative history book that charts the history of the US from prehistoric times up to the first 100 days of the 47th Presidency. When reviewing this book, it’s hard to ignore the fact that even as I type, history is in flux; I can’t help but wonder how a second edition might read.

As GeekDad’s resident Brit reviewer, it perhaps feels slightly odd for me to be reviewing America as it Happened. There are probably other GeekParents with a better understanding of the twists, turns, and impact of US history than I. Nevertheless, here is my view from across the pond of this comprehensive overview of the history of the United States.

What Is America as it Happened?

America as it Happened is published by What on Earth books in conjunction with The Washington Post. This, too, gave me pause. The Washington Post has come under scrutiny recently with massive layoffs and questions about its journalistic integrity. I imagine that the foundations for America as it Happened were laid months before any of this, but it is perhaps an unfortunate tie-in at the time of writing.

That being said, the book does allow you to use QR codes to link to historic articles or podcasts about the subjects in question. It’s a neat way of marrying an old-style encyclopedic volume to modern media, creating a rounded reading experience.

The book presents US history as newspaper articles, with each one written as if it had happened yesterday. Running along the bottom of each page is a continuous timeline that adds brief text about additional events in and around the main news items featured on each double page.

America as it Happened is broken down into 6 sections. First, is “Before 1600,” with the other chapters each covering the next hundred years, up to the 2000s. There is a comprehensive glossary and index, as well as a bibliography and quote sources.

It is pleasing to note that despite the current cultural shift, the book places strong emphasis on the whole of America’s multicultural heritage and population.

Why Read America as it Happened?

This is a great way of dipping in and out of US history. The use of newspaper-style prose makes the entries more immediate and accessible. The use of QR codes is unobtrusive. While some people may prefer that reading be a technology-free zone, a view I sympathize with, I think the addition of multimedia links is a great way to foster deeper investigation and learning.

Reading through America as it Happened, is to be reminded of the amazing story that is the evolution of the U.S.A. It is also a reminder of the importance of a strong outward-looking, friendly America, that supports those around it, understanding that through that support, we all stand taller.

As with all nations, the history of the US is not always positive, and the rise and evolution of the country will not feel the same to everybody who reads this book. From my limited knowledge of US history, I think most will find the book to be a balanced assessment. America as it Happened celebrates the best of the US, as well as examining the not so great. It puts the country’s expansion into a global superpower into context, while also highlighting the contribution the country has made to science, arts, and sports.

America as it Happened is perfect for all school and home libraries and an excellent jumping off point for exploring the history of a country 250 years (and a whole lot more) in the making.

If you would like to pick up a copy of America as it Happened, you can do so here in the US and here, in the UK. (Affiliate Links)

If you enjoyed this review, check out my other book reviews, here. 

I received a copy of this book in order to write this review.

Today’s stack: some novels I finished recently! Two of them were released in February, and the other is following up one that I started in December.

Out of the Loop by Katie Siegel

This novel is a time loop story with a perfect title: Amie Teller was stuck in a time loop for (subjectively) about two years, living September 17 over and over again on repeat. But when she finally woke up on September 18, she found out that her neighbor—a mean-spirited woman who seemed to antagonize everyone she encountered—had been murdered the day before. Amie feels that her intimate knowledge of September 17 should give her a leg up on solving the murder … but she soon finds that it’s not quite as easy as she’d expected.

I loved this take on time loops. While we do get flashbacks to Amie’s various experiences of September 17 (always labeled as “Chapter 1” regardless of which iteration it was), much of the book is what the title promises: Amie’s life out of the loop. It takes her a while to get used to the unpredictability of things, but the murder mystery gives her something to focus on (in part because she wonders if that’s what she was supposed to be doing in the loop). Her Scooby gang consists of another neighbor who builds Rube Goldberg machines in his apartment, and her ex-girlfriend who wants to give friendship a try.

This book has it all: time travel, murder mystery, romance. (The only thing it doesn’t have is any clear explanation of what caused the time loop in the first place, which will just remain a mystery!)

After the Fall by Edward Ashton

Edward Ashton is the author of Mickey7 (which inspired the movie Mickey17) as well as The Fourth Consort, which I wrote about here. He seems to be a fan of writing about humans stuck in situations outside of their control because of aliens. In this story, Earth is now controlled by the “grays,” enormous beings who have kept a small population of humans alive, often performing some sort of tasks. John was adopted—”bonded” is the term they use—to Martok when he was nearing adolescence, and has generally been treated well, though Martok’s own fortunes have had a lot of ups and downs, so the two of them have often been homeless for a spell.

Martok has come up with a new get-rich-quick scheme, buying a house in the woods that he hopes to turn into a wilderness retreat for grays. The problem is that he’s put John up as collateral, so if he defaults on the loan, John is likely to be hunted for sport. On top of that, John inadvertently gives an underworld boss the impression that Martok is a sort of assassin for hire, leading to a series of very dangerous scenarios.

The grays have been on Earth for 120 years, and the history of what happened with their arrival is a little murky. The grays tell it one way, but when John meets some “feral” humans in the wilderness, they have a very different story. It makes for a really fascinating tale: what if humans were the domesticated pets of a more dominant species? How well would we survive?

We Live Here Now by C.D. Rose

I mentioned this novel back in December when I’d started reading it, and promised to follow up once I’d finished. It centers around a mysterious artist whose works challenge your perceptions of art, of interior and exterior. And then people go missing. Some artwork itself goes missing.

The chapters feel like individual vignettes about various characters, most only connected by their ties to Sigismunda’s artwork, and they are deliciously unsettling. There’s a woman who works with audio recordings who feels trapped in a hotel room that has strange acoustic properties. A man has his identity stolen but decides to let it happen, to see what these other versions of him might do. A film crew has a miserable time on a rainy island, trying to make a biopic about a photographer.

I don’t know that the ending, such as it is, really managed to tie things up neatly, but I found the journey utterly mesmerizing. It’s not a horror story, but it does have an undercurrent of … maybe not dread, but at least unease, seen through the lens of the modern art world.

Disclosure: I received review copies of these books. Affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support my writing and independent booksellers.

Today I’m back to my stacks of AI-related books, this time with several novels that feature AI characters, as well as a graphic memoir that also offers a really interesting perspective on the subject.

There are actually a couple books from this pile that I started and gave up on. An older book involved an AI that for some reason was forced to live like a human—like despite the fact that it could process things incredibly quickly, it had to simulate life in real-time, including things like sleeping and eating and hygiene and walking across the college campus rather than just appearing in the destination. I didn’t get very far into that one. Another one just felt a bit off—it was about a college professor who had been resisting using AI for some time and finally used it to make a class outline … and immediately had such a strong bond with the AI that she named it after her deceased child. There were passages that seemed suspect, and when I flipped to the back of the book, I discovered that it was in fact an “ethical collaboration” with AI. No thanks. I’m not even going to bother linking to it because I’d rather it just fade away in obscurity.

UnWorld by Jayson Greene

The plot of UnWorld revolves around a parent’s worst nightmare: the death of a child. Alex was sixteen when he died, and his parents Anna and Rick react to their grief in very different ways. Anna wants to know more: what happened and why? Samantha, Alex’s best friend, was with him when he died and she has a sense that there was something more to his death than an accident, but for Rick her presence just reminds him of his loss and he would rather pretend everything is back to normal.

And then there’s Aviva. Anna had an “upload,” something like a digital assistant except that it stores your memories and is almost like a second self. You can talk to your upload like a sounding board, or ask it to do various tasks (like attending phone meetings, since it speaks with your own voice). Aviva is Anna’s upload, and her grief for Alex’s death is unmoderated and impossible; she wants to be separated from Anna and become free.

There were parts of the book that really intrigued me, but I had a hard time with Rick, who just seemed like a selfish man-baby. Granted, we primarily see him from Anna’s perspective, but he just doesn’t come across as a sympathetic character at all and I found him really grating whenever he appeared. I read that Jayson Greene actually did lose a child—he wrote a memoir about it—and it made me wonder if his portrayal of Rick was based at all on himself, or if he saw himself more in Anna’s shoes.

The book, which is told from the point of view of several different characters, digs into a lot of big questions. Among them: if AI actually became conscious, what would that mean for us and for them? Is it fair to create intelligent “life” but have it constrained to do our bidding? What sorts of rights would it have? There’s also some explorations of memory and thought and the way that the uploads affect it—it makes Anna wonder how much she can trust her own memories; the fact that Alex spent a lot of time talking to Aviva also means that they have memories that Anna doesn’t share.

Artificial Wisdom by Thomas R. Weaver

The world has been severely damaged by climate change—a decade ago, a strange heat wave hit the Persian Gulft and 160 million died. Now, the world is finally ready to elect a Protector, a global leader with unprecedented power to address the climate crisis. Nobody expected that the field would drop to two candidates so quickly, nor that the top two would be the US President and Solomon, an artificial intelligence that governs the independent floating islands. 

Marcus Tully is a reporter, and he lost his wife to the heat wave. So when he gets a tip that President Lockwood may have had something to do with the heat wave, he pursues the story, eventually finding himself at the Floating States, a group of dome-covered islands in the Atlantic populated by those wealthy or influential enough to ride out the climate crisis in comfort.

Artificial Wisdom is set a few decades in the future, but you can see a lot of its roots in the present: billionaires with their tech-based solutions that don’t seem to trickle down, journalism that depends on teams of influencers and micropayments to stay afloat, “neuro-reality” links for communication that are supposedly immune to deepfakes. Solomon, once we finally meet him, is also an interesting character; he’s been designed to make decisions for the Floating States and is capable of processing millions of data points to make decisions (much more capably than current LLM-based “AI”), but was also programmed not to have an ego that would influence those decisions.

However, his designer had her own secrets, as Tully discovers after she is murdered. While digging for clues, he uncovers a conspiracy–but who is really behind it? Is it safer to give this power to a clearly flawed human or to an AI with unknown hidden programming? As I neared the end of this 400-page book, I was surprised by how many new twists kept popping up just as I thought we’d already hit the big reveal. As it turns out, Artificial Wisdom is just the start, because it ends on a cliffhanger and you’ll have to wait until the next book to see where it goes from here.

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite

Here’s another murder mystery, though one that wraps up in a slim 100 pages. Dorothy Gentleman is a ship detective on the Fairweather, an interstellar cruise ship. People on the ship are basically immortal: their memories are backed up regularly, and if the body you’re in is damaged, diseased, or simply too old, you just get your brain decanted into a new one. And if you’re not ready for corporeal life and want a bit of a break, that’s easily arranged too—your mind just sits in storage until you want to come out again.

But when Dorothy wakes up from her extended rest, she finds herself in somebody else’s body, apparently having just sabotaged the Library where minds are stored—the only way to truly kill somebody. Working with the ship’s AI, Dorothy has to solve this mystery before anyone else gets permanently wiped.

This one was a fun one—a bit of a cozy mystery, but in space! It’s a fun exploration of some of the consequences of extended lifetimes aboard an enclosed space—what happens to your stuff? Do you have to keep the same job for centuries? What about relationships?

I see that there’s a second Dorothy Gentleman book coming out in March, so I’m excited to see what sort of mystery she’ll be investigating next.

Artificial: A Love Story by Amy Kurzweil

Back in 2018 I wrote about Flying Couch, Amy Kurzweil’s graphic memoir. It’s about growing up Jewish in America, especially contrasted with her grandmother’s experiences surviving the Holocaust. Amy’s father is Ray Kurzweil, a noted futurist, but he did not really appear in the memoir. I came across Artificial in the bookstore and decided to get a copy because it looked interesting.

Artificial is very much about her dad, and in particular his project to build a chatbot with his father’s voice. He has a huge collection of documents about Fredric Kurzweil, a conductor and pianist who managed to flee the Nazis in part because his music attracted the attention of an American benefactor. Amy recounts conversations with her dad, visits to the storage unit, interactions with her boyfriend. She has to decipher Fredric’s difficult handwriting and transcribe it—and then they work with a company that builds a chatbot so she can have a conversation with it. But does it sound like her grandfather?

This book was first published in 2023, and this chatbot project predates our current LLMs. The chatbot isn’t nearly as sophisticated and wouldn’t pass the Turing test; some of its responses are just repeating passages of text that touch on the same topics but aren’t actually replying to the questions. That said, the process of building the bot teaches Amy a lot about both her grandfather and her father. It’s about memory and attention.

This is a big book—it’s over 300 pages, not even counting the endnotes section, and it’s also a large-format book. The story meanders a bit as Amy includes a lot of slice-of-life stuff, so it is about her as much as it is about her dad and grandfather, and I really enjoyed seeing this portrayal of Ray Kurzweil in particular. You see his efforts at biohacking his body, but also his funny habits like putting his carryon items in a paper grocery sack because airlines won’t make you check it. I really liked seeing Ray through the eyes of his daughter.

Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman

How does Matt Dinniman, author of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, manage to find the time to write a  separate 430-page novel even while every DCC book is larger than the last? I have no idea, but I’m not complaining.

Operation Bounce House takes place in a future where humans have spread to other stars: colonists take the generations-long trip to a new planet, where their descendants build their settlements while bots construct a transfer gate back to Earth. So it’s been about 200 years since the residents of New Sonora have had full contact with Earth. Not much of the planet is actually settled—there’s a big city on the other side of the continent, and a much smaller settlement with some family farms near the coast.

Oliver and his friends, mostly in their twenties, have grown up on New Sonora—their grandparents were the first generation to move to the planet, but their parents’ generations were all wiped out in adulthood by a mysterious illness that seems to have been fixed. As the older generation is retiring or dying off, these young adults are looking forward to the time when instant travel back to Earth is available. But when the gate opens, they’re surprised to discover that Apex Industries has been hired to evict them. And to maximize profits, Apex has turned it into a videogame: players pay big bucks for the opportunity to remotely pilot 3D-printed mechs, and are told that they’re battling dangerous insurgents that have taken over New Sonora.

As with Dungeon Crawler Carl, there’s a lot of game-related plot in this book, like discussing the various models of mechs and their capabilities, though there’s also a bit more real life storyline, because for the famers this isn’t actually a videogame. Oliver has a fleet of agriculture bots, overseen by an AI named Roger, and when Operation Bounce House kicks off, Roger’s perimeter defense program has just unlocked itself. It turns out Oliver’s grandpa knew a bit more about these honeybee bots than he’d let on, and with Roger’s help the farmers start mounting their defense.

There are definitely parallels between this far-flung sci-fi tale and the current state of the world. Farm workers being portrayed by the government as dangerous terrorists? Dehumanizing an entire population, and then deputizing untrained people to act as soldiers who gleefully livestream their attacks? Corporations profiting from the whole mess by playing both sides? Hmmm, maybe this rings a bell.

On top of that, though, the book refers to historical events involving AI—that is, our future. AI’s ability to generate deepfakes was eventually damaging enough that the most powerful AIs were banned on Earth, and simulating real humans came with a host of restrictions and regulations. (And then, of course, those very regulations were used to fool the mech pilots.)

This one’s a wild ride, and it’s worth reading for the joy of seeing bullies get their comeuppance.

The Universe Box by Michael Swanwick

This one’s a collection of short stories—some are more sci-fi and some would maybe be considered fantasy. The reason I’m including it in this stack is because a couple of them involve AI. One, called “Artificial People,” is told from the point of view of Raphael, who’s kind of like an intelligent robot. His creator wants to find some way to profit from him, but just can’t seem to do so (and gets outpaced by better technology). In the meantime, Raphael lives in short periods of activation in between long periods of shutdown, falling in love with his trainer but only seeing her once every several years. Like UnWorld, it’s a musing about the consequences of creating sentient life and what sorts of rights an artificial person would have, though in a much more compact form.

Another story, “Nirvana or Bust,” is about a scientist who has merged her consciousness with an AI—and is now being hunted by an assassin because it would be too dangerous. There’s also a time travel tale, a sort of creation tale, and a ghost story that isn’t a ghost story. I hadn’t read anything by Michael Swanwick before, but I did enjoy several of these tales, which go in all sorts of different directions.

Your Behavior Will Be Monitored by Justin Feinstein

This one isn’t due out until April, but put it on your list now—it may be one of my favorite takes on AI from this list. The book is framed as a collection of emails, chat messages, video transcripts, and more, all centered on a company called UniView, “the most trusted name in AI.” UniView has created many commercially available AI bots, including Simon, the autonomous driving bot that controls a good proportion of the vehicles now on the road. Noah is a copywriter—he’s been hired to work with Quinn, a new bot designed to create personalized ads. The launch has been accelerated, and he needs to teach Quinn about consumer motivation.

Although the book does feature superintelligent AIs beyond current capabilities, there’s just enough that’s based on current LLMs and generative AI to make it plausible. For one, the AIs in the story pursue their given objectives, often in ways that surprise or confound the humans who chose those objectives. It feels like the modern equivalent of making wishes with a genie: sure, maybe you get what you asked for, but not in the way you meant it. The AIs in the story also have a lot of control, an extrapolation of the “agentic AI” that we’re starting to experience now. UniView’s HR is run by an AI, who has the ability to send out emails, conduct interviews, and even make hiring and firing decisions.

Meanwhile, UniView’s CEO is a caricature of the legacy-obsessed tech bro (though he isn’t quite a billionaire yet). He gives TED Talks, makes broad proclamations that the software engineers then have to scramble to implement, and seems entirely clueless about human interactions. He’s too interested in chasing clout and wealth to consider any consequences.

Your Behavior Will Be Monitored is funny and scary and optimistic all at the same time. The book’s chapter headings are a countdown to launch, and you get foreshadowing that something huge happens at launch, so a lot of the book is the anticipation of what. No spoilers here, but I was both surprised and pleased when I discovered what it was.

Disclosure: I received review copies of the books in today’s column (except Artificial: A Love Story, which I purchased myself). Affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support my writing and independent booksellers instead of billionaire tech bros.

Curiously enough, five books on this round up are non-fiction books.

Let’s start with the illustrated stories:

Valentines Are the Worst! by Alex Willan (Author)

Gilbert the Goblin has a sour temper, but somehow, he still has a knack for making friends in unlikely places. He says (like in a previous book) that all he wants is to be left alone, but the funny thing that happens is that he enjoys being pestered by new people.

And even though he thinks cards and hugs are just mushy, the squad of cupids he bumps into are ready to change his mind!

This Valentine-themed book is fun and engaging to read out loud, as his misfortune is trying to catch up with him. Poor Gilbert!

Valentines Are the Worst! is available since December 30, 2025.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Pages: 80/ Hardback
EAN/UPC: 9781665962612

Up next, a book about New Year’s Celebrations:

Welcome, Uncle Nowruz! A Persian New Year’s Story by Rashin Kheiriyeh (Author)

I hadn’t seen such simple and yet magical illustrations in a long time. The texture, color, and detail of each scene held surprises at every page and made me want to visit Persia (now a besieged country known as Iran), a country filled with ancient customs and lovely tales. After all, many popular Arabian Nights tales were set in Persia!

Nane Sarma is winter herself, a lovely grandmother figure. Her brother is Spring, Uncle Nowruz. She longs for him to visit and prepares delicious meals and different details to receive him, but always falls asleep before he arrives.

This year, her three grandchildren will celebrate with her and try to keep her awake for the great visit! There are seven items to prepare, each heralding a different symbol for the party, clothes, saffron for the ice cream, a delicious meal, plants… but as you may have guessed, Nane ends up falling asleep!

And Uncle Nowruz does arrive, the grandchildren truly enjoy his visit and tell grandmother all about it… when she wakes up, and he is gone again!

This beautiful Persian holiday made me want to read it aloud in class, paint pictures related to the holiday, and make some savory Middle Eastern treats!

“Nowruz, to me, is a bridge between past and present, between cultures and hearts—and, always, a new beginning.” –Rashin

Welcome, Uncle Nowruz! will be available on February 26, 2026.

Publisher: NorthSouth Books
Pages: 40 Hardback
EAN/UPC: 9780735846173

In an interesting development, Rashin Kheiriyeh has two books out this month, one as an illustrator:

Home Away from Home by Nazneen Akbari (Author)

Rashin Kheiriyeh (Illustrated by)

Nuha forgot her blond, pretty doll, Maria, at home before embarking on a plane to visit Oman. Now she feels disconsolate, missing her doll and feeling strange in this unfamiliar place.

But is it unfamiliar? Her Jadda, grandmother, is so happy to see her and get her into the Souk to buy some sweets and trinkets!

This is a special market, and little Nuna starts seeing glimpses of home away from home through its colorful streets and stalls. Finally, she finds a dark doll that can be a companion to her fair Maria, and decides to call her Mariam.

Home Away from Home is on sale since February 06, 2026.

Published by Barefoot Books
Hardback | Pages: 32
ISBN: 9798888598962

Up next, a marvelous nonfiction book about Houdini’s love of books:

Houdini’s Library. How Books Created the World’s Greatest Magician by Barb Rosenstock (Author), Mar Delmar (Illustrated by)

The illustrations for this book were carefully drawn, then they were cut out and montaged to depict some of the iconic scenes that make this the most famous magician in the world.

Harry, a Jewish boy born in Budapest, emigrated to America and faced poverty and hardship. His father, a rabbi, was devoted to books, and they held the key for this man to become the amazing Houdini.

Houdini became famous for all of the amazing tricks he accomplished, captivating his audience and making his escape scenes a signature that haunts all magicians to this day. He was also an avid reader and book collector, especially loving and taking care of ancient books about magic!

His amazing collection of rare and unusual books has been donated to many public libraries, including the Library of Congress. The miniature models constructed from paper by Mar Delmar add charm to the book.

“When I have come to town the police have tried to show me that their shackles could hold me, and have failed; the booksellers have tried to sell me many books, and have succeeded”.
—Harry Houdini

Houdini’s Library will be available on February 17, 2026.

Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Pages: 48 Hardback
EAN/UPC: 9780593570135

Up next, a graphic novel in the footsteps of Enid Blyton:

Korobá: The Case of the Missing Kolo by Àlàbá Ònájìn (Author)

Korobá is a ten-year-old kid living in Makoko, a Nigerian fishing village. The bright, colorful waterways of the Nigerian Venice can either be seen as a slump of fishermen or as a thriving community of neighbors and friends.

Korobá has good friends, a lovely dog, and a mystery to solve:
Someone has stolen her best friend’s Kolo. Kolo are wooden piggy banks that children decorate, where they store their savings in order to open them up for a special occasion: the annual harvest festival (genius idea we should all follow, by the way).

The first thing they need to do is figure out suspects and follow clues, sneaking into houses and asking questions. It is an engaging adventure with relatable characters depicted in a positive light, all set in a diverse, vibrant African background.

Will they be able to find who the culprit is before Breaking Day? Follow them to find out…

Nigerian-born author/illustrator Àlàbá Ònájìn has collaborated with UNESCO for several projects; this is his first graphic novel for children. Hopefully, there will be more to come!

Korobá: The Case of the Missing Kolo is on sale since February 24, 2026.

Published by Holiday House
Hardback | Pages: 144
ISBN: 9780823459131

Up next, a math book:

The Big Book of Pi. The Famous Number You Can Never Know. Jean-Baptiste Aubin (Author), Anita Lehmann (Author), Joonas Sildre (Illustrated by)

The elusive number that can describe “the quantity which, when the diameter is
multiplied by it, yields the circumference” (Pi for short) is back in style with this nonfiction, fully illustrated book.

Pi is a constant number, but also, it is an infinite number. (You should never take Pi to a party because it goes on forever, the book is filled with clever jokes like that…).

Pi was already known by the ancient Egyptians, the Mayans, and the ancient Chinese. It is also an irrational number. Humans want to know it, though, and we now know trillions of decimals of Pi.

This is a lovely book about math, numbers, how they shape the world around us, and weird questions only weird mathe-magicians might ask!

The Big Book of Pi. is on sale since February 03, 2026.

Published by Helvetiq
Hardback | Pages: 88
ISBN: 9783039640898

Now for an exciting diary:

Diary of a Marine Biologist Anita Thomas (Author), Sarah Wilkins (Illustrated by), Anita Thomas (Illustrated by)

Emma is a marine biologist. A scientist who studies life in the sea. As you know, most of Earth is covered by oceans, and our life depends on them!

The diary covers a week, covering different activities that marine biologists do. Such as whale monitoring, clownfish populations, how Emma’s favorite species is the sea dragon, and how we can help rebuild reefs and protect marine life.

The illustrations are beautiful, and the book has tons of interesting bits and pieces about marine life.

Diary of a Marine Biologist is on sale since February 03, 2026.

Published by Walker Books Australia
Hardback | Pages: 32
ISBN: 9781761602535

Finally, a graphic adaptation of the Odyssey:

The Odyssey: A Graphic Novel (A Modern Visual Adaptation of Homer’s Epic Tale of Greek Mythology for Young Adults) By Gareth Hinds (Author)

I firmly believe that any theme, transformed into a graphic form, can be instantly understood and made approachable.

In my home country, the Odyssey is still part of the reading curriculum, but it would be much more readily read if it were adapted as Gareth Hinds adapts it here: gods are drawn in their full might, and they toy with humans as pawns on a giant chessboard.

Set after the Trojan war, we get to see Odysseus, King of Ithaca, fight to return home to his beloved land and family. When Poseidon, god of the sea, takes offense, he is destined to face many years of foes and battles before making it back.

The cunning Odysseus has been a hero for the last 2500 years. His resourcefulness and ability to escape different monsters and plots will allow him to finally make it home, rescue his kingdom, and save his wife and son from traitors.

A journey first told in oral form, a graphic novel, it will always be told, in different formats, as it appeals to our sense of adventure and has done so for thousands of years.

The Odyssey: A Graphic Novel is on sale since May 12, 2026.

Published by Candlewick Press
Hardback | Pages: 256
ISBN: 9780763642686

What Is Formula Fast?

Formula Fast is a slim non-fiction hardback picture book aimed at children aged around 7 upwards. It’s by Matt Ralphs and illustrated (beautifully) by Dragan Kordić.

The book offers first an overview and then a deeper dive into the sport of F1, starting with what on earth does Formula One mean, anyway?

It explores many aspects of the sport, such as the changing technology of the cars and a great explainer of the varying tyre types teams use. There’s a history of F1 cars’ evolution from the 1950s to the present day, with a great section about some of the weird and wonderful cars that appeared on circuits through the years.

My F1 geekery as a child, beyond the team and driver names, was inflamed by the various flags the marshals used, and I loved looking at circuit layouts. Both appear in this book. More geekery is to be found in the double-page spread devoted to the steering wheel. The technology of which has massively advanced since the days of my Top Trump cards!

The book closes out by explaining F1’s team system and how money makes the wheels turn. It also looks at the social outreach of the drivers and the sport’s female racers. Finally, there is a glossary for the handful of technical words used in the book.

Why Read Formula Fast?

If you can flick through Formula Fast without making a vrooming sound, you’re a stronger person than me! This book took me right back to my childhood, when I first discovered an excitement for the sport. (In those days, I could hardly get to watch it, as it was only available as a highlights package well after my bedtime.)

This is a great introduction to the sport, and with a new season soon to be underway, Formula Fast is tempting me back in an attempt to recapture my youth – well, mid-life crises often do involve fast cars! I particularly like Dragan Kordić’s illustrations. They’re vibrant and dynamic, perfect for showcasing the excitement of F1. They complement the text perfectly.

The new F1 season starts on March 6th, and if you have a budding young fan, this book is the perfect pre-season training. They’ll be expert avid fans in no time!

If you would like to pick up a copy of Formula Fast, you can do so here in the US and here, in the UK. (Affiliate Links)

If you enjoyed this review, check out my other book reviews, here. 

I received a copy of this book in order to write this review.

This is a short list of fun, engaging books that display craft and imagination.

Pencil & Eraser: New Friends Rule! by Jenny Alvarado (Author)

This is the third book in review on the site by Alvarado. Her graphic novels for early readers, which follow mundane school things like pencils and erasers, are both early-reader-friendly and fun to read.

Pencil and Eraser are best friends; however, a new friend is on the horizon! Ruler is perfect in everything she does: straight lines, ideas for goofiness, you name it. Eraser is having a hard time accepting a friend into their tight inner circle.

With Stella and the rest of the students due to be back from lunch time, they have to hurry up to find a missing green crayon. And, more importantly, can a dynamic duo become a trio without endangering a beautiful friendship?

Pencil & Eraser: New Friends Rule! is available since January 06, 2026.

Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers
Pages: 80/ Hardback
EAN/UPC: 9780593699898

Up next, a pancake book:

Plenty of Pancakes by Carrie Finison (Author), Brianne Farley (Illustrated by)

Opossum Topsy has a bear friend hibernating. The bear’s name is LLou Ann. As Spring approaches, she is preparing a welcome party. She has invited plenty of forest animals to the party and is planning to make pancakes for the reception. So many pancakes! However, someone is eating them as soon as she whips them out of the pan, who?

As Topsy frantically makes more pancakes only to see them disappear, she is worried about her bear friend: Soon, there won’t be any left for her!

All her friends come to the rescue to get the feast done in time. Can they make enough pancakes to feed everyone? And, will we find out who the mysterious pancake snatchers are?

Plenty of Pancakes will be available on January 27, 2026.

Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers
Pages: 40 Hardback
EAN/UPC: 9780593700174

Finally, what if the wild invaded our homes?

The Wildest Thing by Emily Winfield Martin (Author)

Eleanor loved wild things.
Every wing and wild sprout.

There was something wild inside of her,
waiting to come out…

This is a poetic take on our desire to become one with Nature.

The dreamy images portray a girl who wants to give in to her wild side, wild meaning to live in a place where squirrels delve in her kitchen and there are no clear boundaries between inside and outside. A graceful book with poetic imagery, it resembles a dream where this desire comes true.

The Wildest Thing is on sale since January 06, 2026.
Published by Random House Books for Young Readers
Hardback | Pages: 48
ISBN: 9798217023981

One thing a lot of book lovers have in common is the irrepressible urge to share what we’ve been reading, to swap lists with other readers. (It is, of course, one of the driving factors of this regular column!) Looking back at the past year gives us the opportunity to revisit some of those experiences and remind ourselves of the emotions we felt, places we went, thoughts we pondered. So, without further ado, here are some of our favorite reads of 2025!

(Note that not everything here was necessarily published in 2025, it was just something we read during the past calendar year.)

Mariana Ruiz

I wrote a long take in Spanish about Stephen King’s The Long Walk, if you’re curious. Richard Bachman is such an angry part of King, the young, energetic, furious part. Bad things happen to good people, or naïve people with good intentions, in all of Bachman’s books. I would say that is the main difference between the author’s two voices. I love that King still writes. I have a couple of novels left before tackling the short story collections. I am happy to read King religiously. I love the club; whoever reads him has different reasons, but we ultimately regard him as a sure-fire source of entertainment value, which is important in an age of so many stupid distractions. Nothing tops a good book for me.

In French, I came across a translation from the Estonian: The Man Who Spoke Snakish by Estonian author Andrus Kivirähk, first published in 2007. It is set in an imaginary Estonia during the Middle Ages. The novel was awarded the Stalker Award of Estonian science fiction in 2008. I loved deeply and felt that everything could happen, a made-up world where druids, magic, knights, and the absurd come together as an elaborate take on religion and fanaticism. It is as weird and interesting as the original Witcher stories. It also reminded me of another odd book about a made-up world that could have been: The Inheritors by William Golding.

In the Newbery Medals I always strive to pick up, I loved Shiloh. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor won the Newbery Medal in 1991 with this novel about a boy and his dog. 11-year-old boy Marty Preston rescues a beagle who is suffering at the hands of his owner, Judd Travers, and hides him. By doing so, he is lying to his parents and defying an unspoken law: a man can do anything to a dog he has paid for. The bond between this boy and Shiloh is so genuine that it pierces your heart, and how he frees him teaches us a lesson or two about human decency and the value of your word.

In silly children’s books, The Mushroom of Doom, Bob the Vampire Snail, and Pencil and Eraser were the highlights of the year for me. We need humor, silly voices, and absurd situations in our lives; they make reading entertaining!

Jenny Bristol

I read some incredible books this year! I’ve had so many satisfying reads in different genres that it’s hard to pick a short list of favorites. So here is a slightly longer list:

Romance: A couple of standard romcom stand-outs that I read this year include Earls Trip by Jenny Holiday and The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter, the latter of which is probably my favorite stand-alone book from the year, being fun, funny, and well written.

YA/Queer: My favorite discovery of 2024—author Lex Croucher—inspired me to read more of their books in 2025, including two queer YA books, Not for the Faint of Heart and Gwen & Art Are Not in Love. These were wonderful and I highly recommend them. The audiobooks are really well done. Lex has more books coming out this year, including another YA like these, and I look forward to checking them out.

Time Travel: I thoroughly enjoyed the trilogy of books from Kerstin Gier entitled Ruby Red, Sapphire Blue, and Emerald Green. I love a good time travel book, not to mention three, and these were fun and compelling, and kept you guessing at a few plot points until near the end.

Other: I’m not sure how to categorize The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods, but it was a lovely and slightly weird book that’s a little romance and a lot mystery, and it rotated among different character perspectives. Listening to it as an audiobook, it was helpful that they had different people voicing the different roles.

Robin Brooks

As I usually do, I’ll split my favourite books of the year into 3 sections: Fiction, children’s, and non-fiction.

Non-Fiction

This one is easy.

By far, my favourite non-fiction book was Exploring the Universe by Isabel Thomas and Sarah Gillingham. The book felt like it had been created with me in mind. A wonderful meld of word and image to create an informative and arresting catalog of the solar system and beyond.

This book was so good, I immediately put Thomas and Gillingham’s previous book, Exploring the Periodic Table, on my Christmas list. I am pleased to confirm that it is every bit as good.

If you have any interest (or have children who have an interest) in space and what it is made of, then I wholeheartedly recommend this book. It’s the best reference book of its type that I have seen in years.

Children’s Books

Some honorable mentions include Katherine Rundell’s second Impossible Creatures novel, The Poisoned King. I enjoyed this one significantly more than book 1. Perhaps my expectations were too high for the very hyped first volume, and damped down for this second instalment, meaning I enjoyed it more. The Poisoned King was a thrilling read, and I’m now fully on board for this series. 

The Disappearance of Imogen Good was extremely close to being my best Children’s book of 2025, beaten only by one of the finest children’s books I’ve ever read. Imogen Good is a children’s noir centered around a creepy fairy tale and an even creepier house and garden. Some enticing and mysterious goings-on, and great character growth and interactions, make this a first-class novel.

Beating Imogen Good into a narrow second place was Under a Fire-Red Sky by Geraldine McCaughrean, a novel set in the Blitz. It has a wonderful cast of characters who, for a variety of reasons, don’t evacuate London when the rest of the children leave. A tale of heroism and lost innocence, this one had me enthralled throughout. It’s hard to predict what will become a classic, but Under a Fire-Red Sky deserves to be read for generations to come.

Best Fiction Books of 2025

Two of my standout reads of the year feature old folklore and the stories upon which Great Britain is built. The Great When by Alan Moore is a superlative journey into London’s legends, taking place just after the Second World War.

I was worried I might become lost in the depth of Moore’s world-building or that perhaps his prose would be too esoteric for my reading tastes. (I had a similar experience with Jacek Dukaj’s Ice, a book I wanted to enjoy but found impenetrable.) I need not have worried. The Great When is weird but wonderful to immerse yourself in. I can’t wait for book 2, I Hear a New World, which is out next year.

The last book I finished in 2025 was probably my favorite read of the entire year.

Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee brings Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table back to life in a near-future Britain. This novel was published a couple of years ago, but it feels even more relevant now. It’s essentially a story of how the rich manipulate the poor and repeatedly escape the consequences of their actions. Perilous Times is funny, poignant, and bang on the money on just about every page. I loved it.

My final choice is a book that had been languishing on my to-be-read pile for quite some time, Boris Gospidonov’s Time Shelter. It’s a meandering tale that bears repeat reading (though I have yet to do so). I almost certainly missed its subtleties, but this is a book suffused with humor. It is also a warning, a parable about the perils of looking backwards, of believing that the past is brighter than the future. In that it has a lot in common with Perilous Times.

Considering my favorite series at the moment, Justin Lee Anderson’s Eidyn Saga also explores similar themes. Perhaps I want to read books that tell me that things can get better if we start looking forward, if we try to shape our own destiny, without hankering for a time that didn’t exist.

Will James

Despite 2025 being a terrible year on so many fronts, its also the year I read (technically listened) to more books than I’ve ever covered in a single year (not counting comic books).

The biggest reason for that is because my wife convinced me to give Terry Prachett’s Discworld series a try (after a certain ex-favorite author of mine turned out to be a terrible person). She was amazed I’d never read any Pratchett, and she was absolutely right that I would love it. I devoured the entire 49-book Discworld series one after another. I did want to narrow down my favorite part of the series for this write up, though – which was extremely difficult to do!

But at the end of the day (or year as the case may be), while Tiffany Aching, Granny Weatherwax, and the Nac Mac Feegle will always hold a special place in my heart, I have to say that my favorite storyline of all is the City Watch (which is comprised of Guards! Guards!, Men at Arms, Feet of Clay, Jingo, The Fifth Elephant, Night Watch, Thud!, and Snuff). They are my favorite, especially Commander Vimes, because they detail some of the best and most important character development, and especially growth, that I can remember reading.

The City Watch comprises the most stereotypically bigoted coppers you could ever hope not to read, and yet, despite their flaws and -isms, they manage to become more accepting, inclusive, and decent folks. They truly encapsulate my favorite thing about all of Pratchett’s work, which is that even when everything is terrible, there is hope that even the worst of us or the worst situations, can get and be better. And that’s a hope we can all use nowadays.

Next up on my list is James by Percival Everett. I’ve said this more times than I can count, but I believe Everett is one of the greatest American writers of our time and his awards and prizes seem to indicate I’m not wrong. (Side note, I may be slightly biased because he was one of my college professors MANY years ago). That being said, I read several of his books I’d not yet got to this year, but of them, James was the standout. James is somewhat of a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of the slave Jim (James), who is not at all who he was perceived to be in Huckleberry Finn. James is (self-)educated and well read, and the stereotypical slave talk you’d expect is all a facade he and other slaves use around slavers to keep them comfortable. James is a biting yet hilarious critique of slavery and the depiction and perception of Black Americans pre-Civil War that is also just as, if not more, relevant to our current world.

Speaking of series with a lot of books, The Legend of Drizzt series by R.A. Salvatore has grown to 39 books since the story of Drizz Do’Urden began in 1988. I have read them all as they came out, and this year, the latest book in the continuation of that saga is actually a new beginning: The Finest Edge of Twilight. While Drizzt and his companions do appear in this book, it is the story of Drizzt’s daughter, Breezy, and it quickly became one of my favorites in the 40-book saga! The reason for that is twofold, the first of which requires a bit of personal backstory.

Back in 1993, I joined my first real Dungeons & Dragons group (2nd Edition) and spent hours creating my first character, an elven Bladesinger. Bladesinging had just been introduced as a Fighter/Mage character kit in The Complete Book of Elves, and I fell in love with the concept. Unfortunately, my character died less than an hour into our first game, and I had to create a new character (something I as a DM now would never allow to happen because it SUCKS and ruins the fun for everyone). Then Bladesinging disappeared from D&D post 2nd Edition. Fast forward to two months ago and the release of Heroes of Faerun, a new expansion for D&D 5e which brought back the Bladesinger as a Wizard subclass. Needless to say, my next character is going to be a Bladesinger! A mere few days later, I saw that R.A. Salvatore’s latest book, The Finest Edge of Twilight, was available and began reading it. To my utter amazement and joy, Breezy discovers the ancient practice of Bladesinging and becomes a Bladesinger. I never imagined I’d see a Bladesinger on the page. 

The second reason I love this book is because, like me, Breezy is clearly neurodivergent, clearly having ADHD. Seeing a character literally born of some of my favorite characters I’ve grown up with representing me and my own ADHD while being a Bladesinger was just mind-blowing.

And of course, if you are already an R.A. Salvatore and Drizzt fan, this book has everything you expect – fighting, love, intrigue, magic, monsters, and mayhem – written only the way R.A. Salvatore can.

Lastly, I wanted to mention something completely different – two Regency era romance novels by Madeleine Roux – Much Ado About Margaret and These Violet Delights. I have to admit that I do not have a good frame of reference as I’ve never read any romance novels before this year, but I’m a huge fan of Madeleine Roux’s other work, and my wife and I love watching Bridgerton, so these seemed like a no-brainer to pick up and add to my reading for the year. Both books are great fun and full of characters with agency and growth in a world dead set on dictating and stagnating their lives. The main characters in both books are sisters (Margaret and Violet) and they do make appearances in each other’s books, so I would definitely consider this a mini-series and highly recommend reading them both in order. The intrigue and twists in both books kept me guessing, and I would love to see another book set in Roux’s Regency world.

Jonathan H. Liu

I’ve continued to use Storygraph to track my reading habits (at least the date I finished reading a book and a star rating), so at the end of the year I can look back and see which ones I gave 5 stars, and also think about whether those are still the most memorable titles from the year. As always, I have way too many favorites, but here are some of the highlights.

What these first four titles have in common is that they’re all revisiting familiar territory. Among Ghosts by Rachel Hartman is the latest entry in the Seraphina universe, and in fact when I first wrote about it, it was in a stack of other sequels and series. This is a young adult fantasy series that still just sticks with me—I love both the world that Hartman created and the people she has put in it; although the books have dragon and magic, the emotional journeys of the characters have a lot of depth and ring true. The later books branched out and followed other characters, and Among Ghosts introduces us to yet another memorable one.

Also covered in the same column was the conclusion of Phenomena, a comic book trilogy by Brian Michael Bendis and André Lima Araújo. This one is set in a far-future Earth where a weird unexplained phenomenon has changed and mutated both the landscape and the people, leaving behind half-recognizable cityscapes. It’s a little weird, but the payoff in the finale was worth it.

The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal is the fourth book in the Lady Astronaut series, this time taking place primarily on Mars. The future of the colony is uncertain, and there’s some history from the first expedition that has been covered up and Elma is trying to get to the bottom of it. I love this series for the way that it explores a lot of issues that we are still wrestling with in the present day, but paints a picture of some people trying to address them decades earlier than we actually have. It’s also just an intriguing “what if” about the possibilities of space exploration that seem harder to reach these days. I wrote about The Martian Contingency back in August along with two other fantastic books of fiction.

My last visit down memory lane was a longer one: I re-read the entire Inkheart series by Cornelia Funke in preparation for the fourth title, Inkworld. I’d read the original trilogy a long time ago with my wife, and we had also read some portions of them to our older kids, but it had been a while and I needed to refresh my memory. I was reminded again of how much I enjoyed this story about books coming to life (and people entering the world of books).

The next grouping is comics. I read a lot of comics every year, so narrowing down to a few favorites is always, hard, but here are three that I’ve found myself telling people about.

Saint Catherine by Anna Meyer is about a young woman who becomes possessed by a demon the one time she finally skips mass. Although she doesn’t really hold to her Catholic upbringing, she still attended mass every week because of a feeling that something would go wrong otherwise—and then it does. She wrestles with guilt, trying to figure out how to be a good person, while also trying to figure out how to exorcise the demon that won’t leave her alone—even as she wonders if the demon is even real. More about Saint Catherine (and lots of other monsters and witches) here.

Young Hag and the Witch’s Quest by Isabel Greenberg is a retelling of Arthurian legends, told by a character who goes by Old Crone. She shares her stories with Young Hag, who has started to doubt these tales that she’s grown up hearing. Isabel Greenberg is always a wonder to read, often shining a spotlight on the women who get short shrift in traditional folklore and mythology.

Finally, there’s Drome by Jesse Lonergan, covered in this column about hefty comics. The plot of the book is a sort of origin story: chaos and order, personified as gods, create the world and populate it with creatures and people. There’s a struggle between those who only want to conquer and dominate and those who want to advance knowledge and develop culture. What appealed to me the most about Drome, though, was the way it told the story. The way Lonergan uses the comics medium is innovative: the gutters and negative space between panels become part of the illustration. I just discovered that he’s also illustrated the Miss Truesdale series written by Mike Mignola (the Rise of Man storyline has just started up recently and also includes some more creative uses of the medium), so I’m going to be digging into that soon.

My last grouping is of fiction that I enjoyed, and I had to work hard to pare this part down, because there were so many excellent options. Probably my favorite novel of the year was There Is No Antimemetics Division by QNTM, included in this stack of unsettling fiction. It’s about a secret organization that deals with strange phenomena (if you’re familiar with the SCP Foundation, this fits into that universe), and in particular the division that handles things that resist, destroy, or otherwise mess with memory. How do you research and categorize things that you can’t remember? How do you explore things that your brain avoids thinking about? I found the book utterly fascinating; if only I could wipe my memory of the book so I could start it anew.

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow is probably not my usual fare: it’s a fantasy romance novel, and the main reason I gave it a try was because the description mentioned something that sounded like time travel. As it turned out, there’s a sort of time loop involved, but I found myself invested in the characters and the love story, too. The story plays with the idea of myth and legend, and the way that an empire defines itself through the stories that it tells about itself. Here are my thoughts on it.

Okay, one last one: the Semiosis trilogy by Sue Burke. It’s a sci-fi book that spans hundreds of years, and it’s about intelligent plants. A small group of humans, dissatisfied with Earth’s culture, lands on what appears to be an unsettled planet—but it turns out that the plants are the dominant lifeforms, with the ability to think and communicate. The three books are a bit different from each other both in the stories they tell and how they go about it, but I think my favorite was the second book, Interference: a few hundred years after the initial colony, some more humans arrive from Earth to check in, and the plot is about the culture clash between the Earthlings and the Pacifists (as the colonists are known).

Hope you had a rich year of reading in 2025, and that you find some new favorites to read this coming year!

Each year, a few of us here like to make some book-related resolutions: personal goals or hopes for our reading habits for the year. Whether it’s a list of specific books, or a plan to read more of a certain type of book, or even just reducing some piles on the floor, here’s what we’re aspiring to in 2026!

Jenny Bristol

This year, I plan to follow the pattern that I’ve been keeping up with since 2020, to read at least the same number of books as the last two digits of the year. So, since it is 2026, I plan to read at least 26 books this year. I hope to finally finish The Life Impossible by Matt Haig, as well as Flow by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, which is a fascinating-if-dry look at the flow state. I have a couple of Lex Croucher books to still read, and Lex has a couple of new ones coming out this year that I hope will end up on Libby. Maybe I’ll finally re-read Atomic Habits, but we will see where my whims take me.

Mariana Ruiz

I am still chipping away at the entirety of Stephen King; it is a huge task, as the man continues to write, and I am always distracted by other new reads. I am so happy to have him on my TBR list that I don’t mind, though. Someone once said that a huge list of books to read encompasses not only what we want to know, but also means that we plan to live a long, fulfilled life.

World Kid Lit is a fascinating collective of translators of children’s books from different places. They have been one of my sources to learn about new, upcoming titles for a couple of years now. By enhancing diverse voices and books in translation, we open a new window for our understanding of different cultures and different views of life. It’s always a good thing to know more details about the world. By including these voices, I have gained a profound understanding of the world and will continue to advocate for them in the future.

I also hope to keep reading amazing comics and graphic novels, both for children and adults. And I want better, bigger bookshelves, pretty please.

Jonathan H. Liu

Having kept up with my plan to weed at least one (unread) book a week in 2025, I’m planning to keep that up in 2026 with the ultimate long-term goal of clearing the floor space in my office, though at this rate it may take me a decade! Perhaps time to step up the pace, but for now I’ll still say one per week. Maybe this year I’ll keep a list or at least a count of all the books I remove just to have a more accurate count.

My yearly reading challenge goal, which I track through Storygraph, is 150 books in a year. While that number may seem absurdly high, I’ll note that I set a high number because I include graphic novels and middle grade books, which are often shorter, faster reads.

In terms of specific books, I still have this stack of comic book memoirs and biographies that has been accumulating for quite some time, so I’ve finally started to dive into those in the past week. If I can get through all of those in 2026, that’ll be one large box on the floor taken care of!

I also have a stack of AI-themed books (both fiction and non-fiction), continuing the thread from these two columns from 2024 and 2025. I imagine AI will continue to be a prominent topic of discussion in the coming year, so I’m curious to see what sorts of stories are being told about it and how they have changed based on the current status of real-world technologies.

Robin Brooks

My main 2026 resolution is one of mixed emotions. I’m going to be moving away from GeekDad as the main place I review books. After a long time of trying to keep up with books publishers sent me, in the Autumn of last year, I suddenly found reading and reviewing had become a chore. 

Instead, I puttered around in a new space I’ve set up called PotsandPlots for my reading and occasional (very amateur) gardening. I want to use this space to explore why I read what I read, and the links and themes between the books that I choose. I want to dig into the piles of books sitting around the house and clear my backlog without worrying about books I’ve been sent to review. I’ve loved my time writing at GeekDad (and I’m sure I’ll still pop in with reviews from time to time), but because it has so many great contributors talking about all manner of geeky stuff, and my reviews will no longer focus on new releases, I feel chronicling my own rambling reading journey will be best done in a dedicated space. 

Nevertheless, I do still have some reading resolutions.

I want to read Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland. In truth, I want to watch One Battle After Another, as it has many good reviews, but I like to read the books that films are based on before watching them, so I need to try Pynchon again. (I read a couple of his books years ago, and have never, until now, been tempted to do so again.)

Lots of people seem to rate The Count of Monte Cristo as one of the best books ever, and one everybody should read. It’s forever coming up on magazine lists, and has been on my wishlist for a while (as well as The Earthsea Quartet). I received a copy for Christmas, so I aim to read it in 2026. This may feed into a wider project—A Year of Reading Massively. I have lots of books that are 600+ pages that sit unread. This is because trying to keep up with reviews didn’t allow the time to read them. I’m hoping taking a step back will give me the freedom to read more behemoths. Samantha Shannon, Eleanor Catton and who knows, maybe Gravity’s Rainbow wait in the wings.

Quite where I shall fit this reading time in, I’m not sure—a perennial problem. As well as the books I already own, I have a virtual list of over 100 books. I tend to be a paperback reader, and arriving in the first few weeks of the year are Death and the Author by Nnedi Okorafor, Pagans by James Allister Henry, and Ray Nayler’s Where The Axe Buried. So many books and so little time! My predicament is perfectly captured (not for the first time) by Tom Gauld in this week’s Guardian Books.

Now that the year has ended, we look back at our reading resolutions for this year and reflect on the past year.

Mariana Ruiz

I moved home to a new state this year and left behind many boxes of books. Despite that, I managed to read and review more than a hundred books, both for this site and in Spanish for different venues. I also continued writing my books as well (I am writing a long essay about human extinction and have read some tremendous books for that one). I call that a win despite missing my full-to-top-capacity shelves.

I have to confess I’ve been cheating on my Stephen King with Lee Child. Call them blockbusters, but those Reacher novels are pure adrenaline. I am on the tenth by order of appearance and have to commend Tripwire, Without Fail, and The Hard Way. Child knows his dialogues, his geography, and some interesting tidbits about the vast machinery that is the US Army.

As for diverse voices, I am resolutely including a wider range of works in translation and diverse authors in our Stack Overflow. I got my wish in 2025 and got to include a review of a Bolivian children’s book in the US market! The best book in translation I reviewed was My Presentation Today Is About the Anaconda by Bibi Dumon Tak. Pilgrim Codex was a close second.

Jenny Bristol

I made my 25-book goal!

But I didn’t read any of the books I anticipated reading in 2025. I did start The Life Impossible by Matt Haig, but it didn’t at all grab me like his other books usually do, so I’m still not done with it. I do plan to finish it, but other books have seemed more shiny this year. I still haven’t re-read Atomic Habits, partly because I only just found the box it was packed in since we moved last summer.

Most of the books I’ve read in 2025 have been in audiobook form, as it has been easier to consume books that way when I’m driving or crocheting or folding laundry. Any physical or ebooks take longer for me to read, but I still always seem to end up with at least one of each type of book going at the same time. A couple of them I’ve been working on for a year or longer, so maybe I need to buckle down and finish them.

In 2025, I read a bunch of different genres of books, most of which were quite enjoyable. I mentioned my favorites in our recent Favorite Books of 2025 post, but some others that I enjoyed were the memoirs Say Everything: A Memoir by Ione Skye (I learned a ton about her, wow) and The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir by Griffin Dunne (a fascinating look into specific circles during a specific time); a fun time-travel/romance book Remember Me Tomorrow by Farah Heron; leading the “weird” category The You You Are: A Spiritual Biography of You, which is connected to the show Severance and is so strange but very on-brand for its “author”; and the fascinating slice-of-life book Notes from an Island by Tove Jansson, author of the Moomin books and materials. It was a look at a portion of her life, living with her partner on a deserted island for many summers.

Though my year of reading books ended up very different from what I had planned, I do like having intentions and lists about books I want to read, in case I can’t think of anything or need some inspiration. But, since my ultimate goal is just to keep reading, and hit the same number of books as the last two digits of the current year, I don’t beat myself up about taking an unexpected turn and reading other random books, whatever strikes my fancy. I cherish the freedom to just read whatever I want to read! I haven’t been in college for three decades, so I usually just read for pleasure now. And following my curiosity keeps life fresh.

Robin Brooks

My resolutions last year were very arm-wavy. Formed from a nagging sense that I needed to read more. I did try to do that, but going into 2026, I still have the same feeling, so perhaps I didn’t succeed. I have found I need more sleep these days, and this has massively cut into my reading time.

I completely failed to read advance review copies on time. Well, I think I managed it for the first month before breaking down. Reading review copies almost completely derailed my love of books this year. The need to keep up with books I’d been sent made reading suddenly feel like a chore. I have read some great books this year, but as the summer finished, I felt like I was reading out of obligation, when there were other books I’d much rather be jumping into.

In the end, I took a break from reviewing new books and have been rummaging through the big piles of books I have lying around. Some of these did include books I’ve had sitting around for a few years, so I did go some way to fulfilling my pledge to read some of my older, unread titles.

During my reviewing break, I reassessed what I like to read and why I like to review – some of this will lead into my forthcoming 2026 resolutions. One side-effect of this was exploring more general articles and reviews about books, seeking out other creators and reading the books they enjoyed. The upshot of this has led to even more titles being added to my virtual reading list. I now have a digital list of titles that stretches to 100 books. When added to my physical pile of books, it’s clear I have an unsustainable wish-list!

Jonathan H. Liu

The first part of my reading resolutions for 2025 were actually about not reading: in an attempt to reclaim some floor space in my office and make it a place where I’d actually like to sit and read, I resolved to get rid of at least one book each week that I hadn’t read yet. This was pretty tough, but I did manage to keep up with it. I set myself a weekly reminder alarm, and most weeks I managed to choose at least two or three books to weed, so over the course of the year I think I probably removed somewhere close to 200 books. Given that I added about 285 books to my “to read” pile this year (but then did get rid of many of those after finishing them), I think maybe I managed to break even this year in terms of accumulation. Baby steps!

(If you compare the photo at the top of this post with the photo from the beginning of 2024, you can see that there is more floor space now … just not a lot.)

Of the specific books I had listed to read, I did write up the Inkworld series by Cornelia Funke (after re-reading the whole series), and I read City Spies: London Calling by James Ponti in July. As for Against Platforms by Mike Pepi, I gave it a shot but despite the fact that it was a slim book, it was a little too academic for me and I’ll admit my brain just was just not digesting it. I did agree with a lot of the parts I did read, though there were bits here and there that I wasn’t entirely on board with.

I did manage to read four more books in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series (Books 4, 5, 6, 7) by Matt Dinniman, which continue to get progressively thicker. I’m excited that there will be some tabletop games based on the series coming next year—hopefully I’ll get to try one of those!—and I also backed a crowdfunding campaign for a comic book following one of the side characters so I’m looking forward to that.

I didn’t manage to return to May Contain Lies by Alex Edmans, but I’m hanging onto that one because it still feels quite relevant. (I may need to restart at this point.) And I did finally finish reading The Spiderwick Chronicles.

Overall, I’m pretty pleased that I managed to stick to most of my reading resolutions for the year!

Art, love, stargazing, small creatures, an upcoming title ,and a fascinating non-fiction book are part of this list.

Let’s start with early readers:

Meet the Smushkins by Claudia Rueda (Author)

The Smushkins are a bunch of fun characters that love to do everything together.

Now that they are on the lookout for a house, they have specific needs:

Lots of light, a big table, an apple tree, a playground, and an ice cream cart! What makes a house an ideal place?

The book is meant for early readers and has lots of details and magical thinking about how houses are supposed to be inhabited.

Meet the Smushkins is available since December 02, 2025.

Publisher: Candlewick
Pages: 40/ Hardback
EAN/UPC: 9781536236583

Up next, a book by my doppelganger:

Ro-Bo by Mariana Ruiz Johnson (Author), Lawrence Schimel (Translated by)

In this age of AI, Mariana Ruiz Johnson imagines how it would be to trust a kid with a robot to play with.

Milo has a brand new RO-BO, a robot to play video games, listen to stories, and learn new skills, like how to make breakfast.

When they get to go outside to play with other kids, RO-BO builds them a spaceship and takes them on a great adventure to another world… only to use so much energythat he powers down. How are they ever going back home?

Luckily, kids can restart him using kinetic energy. By working together, the new friends find their way home and plan for their next amazing adventure… with a charger this time.

Ro-Bo is on sale since October 14, 2025.

Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Pages: 40 Hardback
EAN/UPC 9781459842267

Up next, a book about food:

Bread Is Love by Pooja Makhijani (Author), Lavanya Naidu (Illustrated by)

Bread can be many things.

A loving mum bakes a loaf every week with the help of her children. With little phrases around the weekly custom, the kids reflect on the many forms bread can take. Bread is simple; it requires science and luck. It is one of the cornerstones of our eating.

Bread can taste amazing, especially if it’s made with love.

. Bread Is Love will be available since February 10, 2026.
Published by Roaring Brook Press
Hardback | Pages: 32
ISBN: 9781250906885

Up next, a book about art making:

Making Art by Diana Ejaita (Author)

This is a nonfiction book about how everyone can make art.

This is an encouraging book about creativity and how it can take many forms: found objects, break dancing, molding clay… To create is to be human.

You can create anything, anywhere, with any materials. Ejaita portrays a wide array of characters exploring their own feelings and ideas, and tells kids in a poetic way what many forms art can take.

Art and creating are for everyone!

. Making Art is available since November 18, 2025.

Published by Rise x Penguin Workshop
Hardback | Pages: 32
ISBN: 9780593660157

Up next, a book about astronauts:

Through the Telescope: Mae Jemison dreams of space by Charles R. Smith Jr. (Author) and Evening Monteiro (Illustrator).

This is a poetic take on the inspiration behind the decision of Mae Jemison to become an astronaut.

How far to the stars? A good question, one that can be formulated when peering through the telescope and wondering about what is out there, in store for us.

Mae Jemison promised herself, as a little girl, that someday, she would make it there. Meanwhile, she is inspired by the vastness of the universe.

Mae Jemison is a real-life astronaut, physician, and engineer, the first Black woman to reach outer space.

. Through the Telescope: Mae Jemison dreams of space</em is available since December 02, 2025.

Published by Orchard Books
Hardback | Pages: 40
ISBN: 9781338815290

Finally, an epic nonfiction book about ages bygone:

Epic Earth. A Wild Ride Through the History of Life on Our Planet by Lindsay Nikole (Author)

Lindsay Nikole is infectiously in love with bygone eras. She loves all the bizarre creatures you can find in our 4.6 billion-year history. From the Precambrian era to the present, each of the weird creatures described in this book is a hallmark of how life was spent in different eras.

Because life on Earth is full of bizarre moments, you get to know about a myriad of tryouts for living organisms like Opabinia, Titanoboa, ancient sharks, giant bugs, and googly-eyed creatures with way too many teeth.

From volcanoes to mass extinction to ice ages, life always found a way. Even we human beings fit into the picture, even though our central role is brief at best.
.
Known for blending academic knowledge and communication skills in her TikTok and Youtube videos, the author does bring her signature energy and storytelling ability to the book.

Epic Earth is on sale since November 11, 2025.

Published by Wellfleet Press.
Paperback | Pages: 227
ISBN: 9781577155348

The end of the year is looming—I always feel like the last couple months of the year just sweep past me, and I remember all these things I’d been thinking I’d get done. For example, one of my family’s holiday traditions is to go out for dim sum on Christmas morning with some friends. We’d done it for several years but had to put it on hold for a while because of the pandemic (during which time our favorite restaurant shut down and we had to find a different option). Every time we went, we’d say “wow, that was great—we should go more often!” And then … it would be December again and we hadn’t gone for a whole year. Starting next week we’ll have the first of our traditional year-end Stack Overflow posts: reflecting on our reading resolutions from the beginning of the year, making new resolutions for 2026, and sharing some of our favorite reads from 2025.

For now, though, I find myself in the middle of a couple stacks of books that I haven’t quite finished yet. I’ve got four novels today: two that I finished reading and two that I’m still reading. Though they’re all quite different from each other, the one thing they share is that they’re all a little unsettling in one way or another. So if you like your fiction just a little bit (or a lot) freaky, here are a few books that might fit the bill.

There Is No Antimemetics Division by QNTM

This book was originally serialized online between 2015 and 2020, and has been reworked to make it flow better as a novel. The story centers on the Unknown Organization, a sort of “Men in Black” secret organization that handles all the weird and unexplainable things in the world so that the rest of us can stay ignorant and go to sleep at night. Among the things that are studied, tracked, and sometimes contained by the UO are memetic phenomena: things that lodge themselves in your mind, things you can’t ignore, ideas that literally spread virally.

And, of course, the opposite: antimemetic things defy memory. Giant obelisks that you can look at but just don’t see because your brain glides past them. Creatures that eat specific memories from your mind. Things that you forget as soon as you leave their presence. These are things handled by the Antimemetics Division, headed by Marie Quinn.

The start of the book finds Marie trying to convince her boss that there is, in fact, an Antimemetics Division and that she has worked there for years—because one of the hazards of working in a division dealing with memory-eating phenomena is that people tend to forget about you entirely. The book consists of various vignettes surrounding the Antimemetics Division, and it has a sort of existential horror that I feel like Lovecraftian stories were supposed to evoke but never actually did for me. The book includes various case files from the UO that purport to explain various things that have been discovered, and they’re things that make your brain crawl a bit. The idea of erasing memories—sometimes intentionally—makes for some fascinating plot points, and I liked the thought experiments about a whole department trying to study things that by their very nature resist understanding.

I don’t want to give away too much of the story, but I thoroughly enjoyed being freaked out by this book. In case you’re familiar with the SCP Foundation (a collection of fiction that is very much in the same sort of shared universe, about the weird things that normies don’t know about), the stories in this book were originally serialized there, so that gives you a sense of the type of things you might find here. Suffice to say, this is probably one of my favorite books of the year and one that I’ll be thinking about for a while.

Hard Reset by Jonathan Yanez

When Tom Dexter wakes up in a coffin-like box with a weird computer screen in it, he has no idea what’s happening and has no memory of who he was before or where he is now… but it doesn’t take long for you to understand that he’s in some sort of Matrix-like videogame. Although most of the game focuses on Tom’s escapades in this sort of futuristic Wild West alien planet, we do get the occasional scene set in the real world, following some of folks running the program.

The idea is that Earth is in trouble, and the game has been designed to identify the people who would have the skills to lead an expedition to a faraway planet to establish a new home for humanity. Whoever can complete the game—which involves figuring out the goal of the game—will prove themselves capable. But the problem is that when people die in the game and respawn, they lose a little bit of themselves each time—and eventually become zombie-like figures, stuck in the game with no hope of finishing.

Hard Reset is billed as a “LitRPG novel,” a genre in which characters are playing a game and the story itself includes things about stats, game rules, and so on. Compared to Dungeon Crawler Carl, another notable example of the genre, Hard Reset actually focuses a lot less on specific game mechanics. Occasionally Tom checks his stats and spends skill points, but for the most part the reader is left in the dark about the specifics of how the game works, and there aren’t enough actual hard numbers that you really care about those much. Instead, it’s much more about the corporation behind the game, run by a mysterious Chairman, and one woman in particular who is in charge of selecting the people who get wired into the game.

This one wasn’t entirely satisfying to me, in part because there was just so much that I found implausible—and I say that as somebody who has really been enjoying Dungeon Crawler Carl, which features a talking cat. The general premise, that the game was designed to find people who could spearhead a space colonization effort, doesn’t feel like it fits with what actually happens in the game: trying to take down a corrupt mayor, which involves lots of shootouts and some hand-to-hand combat. The company’s stated aim to benefit humanity is also at odds with the way it is literally destroying people, and when I eventually heard the planned timeline for saving the world, it felt absurdly brief.

There’s certainly some potential for the “stuck in a videogame” premise, as well as for the conflicted employee who is working to make up for the damage they’ve done, but this is a game I probably won’t continue to the next level.

Process by Matthew Seiji Burns

Lucas Adderson, the narrator of this story, is not really somebody you’d probably want to hang out with. He’s singularly obsessed with success, narrowly defined in terms of recognition and monetary gain. He doesn’t understand why other people he has worked with in the tech industry have succeeded, gotten promotions, made millions, but he—with a similar background and intellect (by his own evaluation)—has been passed over time and time again. Maybe it’s because he’s just too nice a guy, he thinks to himself.

Reading between the lines, you get the impression that he doesn’t actually have the same skills as his successful friends. He’s the idea guy, who feels like somebody else should be doing the actual work of coding whatever grand vision is in his head, and calls that an equal partnership. When he strikes out on his own after losing his job, determined to make this thing that will change the world, it’s not even his own software that he starts pitching to interested parties—it’s something somebody else wrote that he doesn’t even quite understand. He’s just been fiddling with it and adding to it without really knowing how any of it works.

This is one of those books that I’m not sure I would say I’m enjoying, because of what a miserable person Lucas is, but it’s also a pretty sharp portrayal of the tech industry in the past couple of decades. Burns was himself a videogame designer, and he sets the story in a world that he is personally familiar with: Lucas is in Redmond, the land of Microsoft (and also its would-be competitors). The story is populated with tech bros who have grand visions of changing the world with their tech, but no concept of how real people would actually use it.

I’m about three quarters of the way through the book, and the whole story is written as something that Lucas is telling another character, Megan, somebody who was apparently quite successful back when the two of them worked at the same company. You get little glimpses of Megan here and there, but Lucas spends most of his attention on himself, so she is still little more than a cipher, a symbol of what Lucas could have been. And there’s a lot of foreshadowing: you get the sense of something ominous, something big that has happened, and Lucas’s whole story is a roundabout way of explaining what has happened. But I haven’t yet gotten to what exactly happened. Though the plot of the story (so far) has been firmly in the real world—no memory-eating monsters, no digitized people—there is this feeling of unease that I’m sure will come to a head in the final quarter, and I’m curious to see where it goes.

While the story itself is mildly unsettling, the presentation of the book has its own disorienting effect. The physical book is quite a production: the page edges are hot pink with various symbols on them, and the cover is a combination of a metallic copper and hot pink, with a pixellated font that is occasionally used for pull quotes within the book as well. The interior of the book also often uses the copper and hot pink, along with photographs that are blurred or oddly cropped or strangely digitized. The text is strangely justified so that there are often diagonal stripes of blank space cutting across the page. It is a book that plays around with the typography, not in a way that makes it difficult to read, but gives the impression that every line of the book was laid out with some intent that you can’t quite grasp.

I’m very curious to see where this story is going, but I’ll admit that it took me a while to get going because Lucas is just not somebody I’ve really enjoyed spending time with. We’ll see if the payoff was worth the setup.

We Live Here Now by C.D. Rose

Here’s one I’ve just started, but already it feels like a story that would fit in the world of There Is No Antimemetics Division. It’s about the art world, and appears to be a series of stories that have some connection to an artist named Sigismunda Conrad. Her conceptual art installations have challenged notions of interior and exterior, of where the piece ends and the real world begins. She herself is enigmatic, elusive, and has even known to be frequently absent while her team of hired hands works on an installation. Several people who visited one of her pieces have gone missing, though it isn’t clear whether it has any connection to her art.

The opening chapter is a sort of retrospective article about Conrad, and feels like the sort of thing you’d read in The New Yorker, with impressions of her earlier work, interviews with people who knew her or worked with her, and lots of name-dropping of other artists (mostly real, I think?). It feels grounded in reality, even while the writer has trouble remembering certain details about Conrad’s exhibits, as if her artwork has antimemetic properties of its own. Then there’s a chapter about a woman who facilitates art sales, though she would probably never use a term as crass as “sale.” These are the rarefied heights where conversations hint and imply, and vast amounts of money somehow change hands without actual numbers ever being discussed. A potential buyer leads Kasha to a Conrad piece, which then results in a strange wild goose chase. And then the next chapter is about somebody else entirely.

Even in the first chapter, presented as a somewhat drily academic essay, I was hooked. What is going on here? I’m definitely intrigued, and will report back in the new year after I’ve finished the book.

My Current Stack

I’ve got a big stack of comics (mostly for kids) that are sequels, plus another stack that has the first two books in a series, so I figured that might make a good topic for an upcoming column—though not until mid-January at the earliest. I’ve started reading those, and perhaps if I get through those I’ll finally tackle this (now-overflowing) box of comic book biographies that I think I first mentioned over a year ago. Oops!

Hope you have a happy holiday season!

Disclosure: I received review copies of the books covered in today’s column. Click on the book titles for affiliate links to Bookshop.org, which help support my writing and independent booksellers.

Lord of the Flies is an amazing book, though it was notable in my early life for not being The Lord of the Rings, a book I was obsessed with. I didn’t read William Golding’s classic until much later, but it was, without a doubt, a nailed-on classic. It seems amazing to me that even in my youth, it should have already gained such a status, having been written less than 20 years before I was born.

“Instant classic” is a superlative often bandied around about books, but rarely deserved. I’ve lost count of the “instant classics” I’ve read that nobody can remember 5 years later. Lord of the Flies is a novel that can truly claim the title. A perennial favorite and forever on school reading lists, it has now been updated by Aimée De Jongh, who brings us Lord of the Flies: The Graphic Novel.

What Is Lord of The Flies – The Graphic Novel?

I guess one could argue whether a book as good as Lord of the Flies needs a graphic novel. The answer is, honestly, possibly not. But that doesn’t mean that De Jongh hasn’t created something special.

This is a straight-up retelling of the story. A chunky tome, filled with evocative illustrations that reinforce the power of Golding’s story. According to the author’s afterword, all the text used comes straight from the original. She states her aim as wishing “[to add] meaning through composition, colour and atmosphere.”

Why Read Lord of The Flies – The Graphic Novel?

I would say De Jongh succeeds in her aim. Her pictures vividly bring to life the horror of the “Lord of the Flies” itself. The festering pig head becomes even more malignant in De Jongh’s drawings. I’m not sure whether it is due to the artists’s framing of the author’s words or the longevity of Golding’s vision, but this retelling brought home how relevant the original novel remains.

Looking at how the boys arranged themselves and the assertion of “might is right” chimes with the politically turbulent times we find ourselves in. Jack’s rise to power and the way in which the other boys are cowed by him plays out in front of us on an almost daily basis. Through de Jongh’s treatment of the text, we can see echoes of the populism that infects the world today.

Lord of the Flies is a text that I think will hit home for every reader. It is currently on the GCSE syllabus in the UK (the exams we take at 16) and its themes and characters will resonate with anybody of that age. Aimée De Jongh’s accessible retelling opens opportunities for even more people to enjoy the novel.

I don’t think this interpretation can replace the power of reading the original, but as a way into the full text, it is perfect. There were certainly some nuances that I either overlooked when I first read the book or have since forgotten from when I did. The lure of rereading the original book is strong. I’m definitely considering taking another look.

I think for anybody new to the story will, after reading the graphic novel, want to dig deeper – “You mean there’s more of this? – Sign me up!” Though, perhaps I’m telegraphing my own love of reading onto a teenage reader in a way that just won’t stack up.

Nevertheless, whether you’re a newcomer to Golding’s work or already a lover of it, there is much to enjoy about Aimée De Jongh’s graphic retelling. It’s a compelling companion to one of the 20th Century’s finest novels.

If you would like to pick up a copy of Lord of the Flies – The Graphic Novel, you can do so, here in the US and here, in the UK. (Affiliate Links)

If you enjoyed this review, check out my other book reviews, here. 

I received a copy of this book in order to write this review.

What Is The Stuff That Stuff Is Made Of?

The Stuff That Stuff is Made Of has been in my “books I need to review” box for far too long. I’ve been keen to get to it. It’s a beautiful book about plants that we use in our everyday lives, all around the world. Hero plants that we take for granted.

The Review

Over 64 pages and 30 amazing plants, Jonathan Dori will take us on a journey through the many different plantstuffs that we cannot do without.

Whether it be for obvious ones like tea (though not coffee!), rubber, and pine, or more esoteric plants, such as dandelion, gutta-percha, and boabab, Dori and his illustrators, Raxenne Manquiz and Jiatong Liu, have got you covered.

Each entry consists of a double-page spread, with one half being given over to botanical information about the plant, including a picture of what it looks like. The other half describes how it is used and the important processes it is involved in. These might be natural or industrial. For example, whilst sugar is refined to make sweets, bamboo is used to feed pandas. Very different processes, but both are useful!

There is often a historical context for the plant, too. For example, how beech trees became associated with thunder, how the Mayans planted crops of beans, squash and maize close to each other, or how dandelions were used to make rubber in the Second World War.

The book is packed full of information. Each picture is wonderfully evocative, drawing the reader in. By showing the cultural importance of plants from all over the world, The Stuff Stuff is Made Of presents an absorbing global history of horticulture and agriculture. This really is a lovely book, perfect for inquisitive children and very handy for any home or school library.

Why Read The Stuff Stuff Is Made Of?

If you would like to pick up a copy of The Stuff That Stuff Is Made Of, you can do so here in the US and here, in the UK. (Affiliate Links)

If you enjoyed this review, check out my other book reviews, here. 

I received a copy of this book in order to write this review.

Books! Whether you’ve constantly got a book in progress (or two or three) or you read several books a night to your kids, books have a heavy presence in our lives. We can use them to learn, to imagine, and even to escape, and they always make great gifts. You can gift your favorite books to your loved ones, or perhaps your loved ones have asked for specific books. In any case, there is a book out there for everyone. Here are some of our favorites this year.

Disclosure: Some of the links below may be affiliate links. This means that the GeekDad/GeekMom contributor may make a small amount of commission if you click through and purchase the item at no extra cost to you. We may have also received the item for review from the manufacturer.

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice Collector’s Edition, curated by Barbara Heller

Suggested By: Jenny Bristol
Mfg: Chronicle Books
Price: $60
Purchase: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice Collector’s Edition
Description: If you, like me, can’t get enough Jane Austen, this newest, fanciest edition of Pride and Prejudice is a great gift idea, for yourself or for your favorite Austen fan. Building on the quality and success of the 2020 version with all of its handwritten letters and bonus material (and check out the Persuasion version from 2022 too), this Collector’s Edition has five additional inclusions and new bonus content, along with higher quality materials, gorgeous endpapers, a more sturdy build, and an included slipcase for the two-volume set. If you want to feel immersed in the Regency era, this is a fun way to do it. Read my full review on GeekMom. JB

The Traitor of Sherwood Forest by Amy S. Kaufman

Suggested By: Sarah Pinault
Mfg: Viking Penguin
Price: $18
Purchase: The Traitor of Sherwood Forest
Description: As a fan of alternative reality fiction, I was delighted to come upon this first novel by renowned medievalist Amy S Kaufman, The Traitor of Sherwood Forest is her reworking of the myths of Robin Hood, form the perspective of one of his merry men – or merry girl as it were. The story follows Jane Crow as she works for the Lord of the Greenwood, being drawn further into his world with every work and whisper. She must ultimately carve a path for herself as player or prize. The story feels rich and vibrant like only a medieval scholar could create, but with a passionate tale that keeps pushing you through the story. Great for fans of British mythology. SP

The Binti Trilogy

Suggested By: Mariana Ruiz
Mfg: The Folio Society
Price: $100
Purchase: The Binti Trilogy
Description: Neddi Okorafor is the best science fiction writer alive. She has a powerful voice, a mighty blend of African roots and outer space imagination, and Binti is one of her most respected works. The first novella of the trilogy won her both the Hugo and the Nebula. The Folio Society collects the three novels of this young Himba girl, an expert mathematician, who faces alien creatures that kill her entire crew on her way to Oomza University. Facing the Medusae is the bravest thing she has ever done, and her bond will forever alter the interspecies war between them and the human Khoush race. The luxury set has all-new illustrations by David Palumbo, a box case, and dark blue metallic endpapers. MR

The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

Suggested By: Z.
Mfg: Edited by Christopher Golden and Brian Keene
Price: $20.91
Purchase: The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand
Description: An expansive collection with a little something for everyone, The End of the World As We Know It is a veritable love letter to Stephen King’s The Stand, chock-full of names you’ll recognize. In its weaker moments, contemporary authors try to ape King’s style, from his effortless wit and the turn of a phrase to his penchant for injecting magical realism into even the most mundane prose. At its best, though, it moves the spirit of The Stand through otherwise uncharted waters, taking Captain Trips to Puerto Rico, Pakistan, and even the multiverse of the Dark Tower. —Z.

Levenger Master Class Writing a Novel Circa Workbook

Suggested By: Dakster Sullivan
Mfg: Levenger
Price: $59.50
Purchase: Levenger Master Class Writing a Novel Circa Workbook
Description: Everyone talks about writing a novel, and the Circa workbook is basically the friendly shove that helps you go from talking the talk to walking the walk. The step-by-step exercises make figuring out genre, theme, characters, and plot feel fun instead of intimidating. It reads like having a gentle writing master right at your desk, guiding you from dreaming to accomplishing. DS

Return to Sender by Vera Brosgol

Suggested By: Jonathan H. Liu
Mfg: Roaring Book Press
Price: $18.99
Purchase: Return to Sender
Description: Oliver discovers a weird mail slot inside his new apartment, and is delighted to find that it can grant wishes, usually by way of a Rube Goldberg-like series of events. But if getting what he wants also means that somebody else suffers a little, is it still worth wishing? This is Vera Brosgol’s first middle grade novel (after many graphic novels and picture books), and it is absolutely delightful. JHL

Codex Regenesis

Suggested By: Jenny Bristol
Mfg: Chronicle Books
Price: $40
Purchase: Codex Regenesis
Description: If you like the book-as-puzzle genre with an occult theme, the new book Codex Regenesis will be a fun one this holiday season. Mystery, mystical elements, and story drive the content. This Codex is not just a simple book with pages—it’s a journey, an artifact, with built-in puzzles and devices that you solve and use as you navigate five different tales and solve the mysteries, then use those answers to solve the final mystery. There is a ribbon bookmark to keep your place. A tad on the creepy and gruesome side, the book is filled with carefully crafted art and even a custom typeface. With flaps to lift, letters to read, and clues to uncover, this book will keep you and/or your loved ones engaged for quite a while, and then be something fun to turn back to over time. This is one to savor. JB

The Viscount St. Albans by Natania Barron

Suggested By: Sarah Pinault
Mfg: Solaris Nova
Price: $16.99
Purchase: The Viscount St. Albans by Natania Barron
Description: It is a truth universally acknowledged that the imagination of Jane Austen has inspired many a continuance, spin off, and expansion of her universe. Former GeekMom writer Natania Barron has done just this with her Love in Netherford fantasy series, taking beloved settings and themes from Austen’s works and creating a wonderful fantasy adventure with just the right amount of romance, and a perfect amount of supernatural. Book 2, The Viscount St. Albans was released this year, and discovering the world of these gentle witches and regency vampires is a wonderful way to spend the last reading days of 2025. You can see a full review of the first book in the series on GeekMom here. SP

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

Suggested By: Z.
Mfg: Stephen Graham Jones
Price: $24.28
Purchase: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
Description: When academic Etsy Beaucarne is contacted about the discovery of a journal penned by an unknown great-great-grandfather, she thinks the manuscript might be just the shot in the arm that her flagging career needs. Instead, she uncovers a startling tale packed to the rafters with generational trauma, cold-blooded murder, and hot-blooded vampirism. Vicious and visceral, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is Stephen Graham Jones at his best. With all his influences on display—from slasher cinema to Louis L’Amour’s frontier tales to the Native American Renaissance—Jones winks at more conventional undead narratives (like that other novel about interviewing a bloodsucker) while simultaneously decolonizing vampire lore. —Z. [Review materials provided by Saga Press.] 

Levenger Master Class Master Your Life Circa Workbook

Suggested By: Dakster Sullivan
Mfg: Levenger
Price: $39.50
Purchase: Levenger Master Class Master Your Life Circa Workbook
Description: This 90-day Circa planner is like giving your brain a roadmap instead of letting it chase every squirrel in its path. Dr. Kristen Race mixes neuroscience-backed goal setting with practical rituals. I really like using her monthly goal planning worksheets, daily pages, and a “Three for Me” self-care check to stay focused without feeling stuck in a routine. I also like that it’s only for 90 days, so I’m not committed to carrying a full year around in my bag. DS

Reissued! The Cave of Time and Other Choose Your Own Adventure Books

Suggested By: Jenny Bristol
Mfg: Choose Your Own Adventure
Price: $8.99
Purchase: The Cave of Time and Other Choose Your Own Adventure Books
Description: Whether you’re a nerd of a certain age, like me, and remember Choose Your Own Adventure books yourself, or a parent of a ‘tween who is looking for some agency in their fiction, it’s a great time to circle back to these choice-based books that many Gen-Xers know and love from our childhood. The Choose Your Own Adventure folks are reissuing The Cave of Time and quite a number of other early titles, and it’s time to revisit them. See how many different stories you can experience! Read my full review of The Cave of Time on GeekMom. JB

Swordheart by T. Kingfisher

Suggested By: Sarah Pinault
Mfg: Bramble
Price: $28.99
Purchase: Swordheart
Description: About a paragraph and a half is all it took for me to be fully invested in this story and in our protagonist Halla. Her world is quickly upended when she inherits her Uncle’s fortune and finds herself in a race for her freedom against an unhappy family, that would trap her in an unhappy marriage to control that fortune. She finds herself the wielder of a magical sword that unleashes a full bodied knight from a previous age and the two set of on a journey to claim Halla’s agency in a world that would deny it. Halla’s quest is strange, silly, and fully captivating. Swordheart is the first of a planned trilogy, with the sequel, Daggerbound, projected to be released in August 2026. I for one, cannot wait. SP

Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Literature

Suggested By: Z.
Mfg: Edited by Becky Siegel Spratford
Price: $18.00
Purchase: Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Literature
Description: Why I Love Horror asks the single enduring question posed to all fans of the genre, and the myriad answers provided by a veritable who’s who of contemporary horror visionaries attest to its undeniable importance. Full of familiar names like Tananarive Due (The Reformatory), Josh Mallerman (Bird Box), Hailey Piper (The Worm and His Kings), Grady Hendrix (My Best Friend’s Exorcism), and Stephen Graham Jones (My Heart Is a Chainsaw), Why I Love Horror explores the simple functionality of horror fiction, and it will likely help the gorehound on your holiday gift list better understand their own love affair with the macabre. –Z. [Review materials provided by Saga Press.] 

The Wind Weaver by Julie Johnson

Suggested By: Sarah Pinault
Mfg: Ace
Price: $29.00
Purchase: The Wind Weaver by Julie Johnson
Description: A society in fear of a magic they were once in thrall of. A mysterious commander in charge of his enemy’s armies. A halfling who may hold the key to reconciling, or annihilating, the kingdom she thought she didn’t belong to. In the world of Anwyvn Julie Johnson has created a beautiful and haunting magical realm that is bursting at the seams to become something other than it’s population is trying to make it. The Wind Weaver is the first in a new series of hidden magic and romance, combing familiar elements with broad new storylines that will sweep you up within the first few pages. SP

The Geographer’s Map to Romance by India Holton

Suggested By: Sarah Pinault
Mfg: Berkley Publishing Group
Price: $19.00
Purchase: The Geographer’s Map to Romance by India Holton
Description: India Holton lives in New Zealand where she enjoys wandering around forests, and that is abundantly evident in her prose. Julia Quinn describes the book as a cozy romantasy with a “splash of Indiana Jones,” which is a perfect description of how I felt going along on this journey with Professors Elodie and Gabriel Tarrant. This book further fed my addiction to Fae academic stories with a hint of romance. In this tale the pair follows an eruption of magic in a small Welsh village. Just as in The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love, Holton takes pieces of our reality and blends them with magic to create an alternate reality that is just slightly off in another delightful historical parody romcom. SP