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!

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.

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

Today’s stack: several comics from the big pile!

Mapmakers trilogy written by Cameron Chittock, illustrated by Amanda Castillo

This trilogy was originally published from 2022 to 2024, and I finally got around to reading the whole thing recently. The three titles in order are: Mapmakers and the Lost Magic, Mapmakers and the Enchanted Mountain, and Mapmakers and the Flickering Fortress. At the heart of the story is Alidade Rose, a girl who lives in the small village of Alden but yearns for something more. That frequently gets her in trouble with the Night Coats, who run the town and insist that everyone stay in their place.

But then, while lost in the forest, Alidade and her friend Lewis discover a magical hidden lodge that used to belong to the Mapmakers—and they discover an old map of their valley that didn’t line up with their own experience. Within the map is a Memri—a magical being that is tied to the land and this map—and the two friends soon find themselves on an adventure through the three books, seeking out other Mapmakers and figuring out what happened to all the other Memris.

The books are about building community and being honest and authentic—and the kids (and other young Mapmakers) soon find that the Night Coats had their own nefarious reasons for hunting down and destroying the old maps. It’s also about a group that rules through control and fear, who rewrites history to their own liking—something that seems pretty pertinent these days.

Zicky: Wrath of the Rat King written by Darin S. Cape, illustrated by Zeno Decrux and Hiorsh Gabotto

Zachary—known as Zicky to his family—has a secret: when night falls and he’s supposed to be sleeping, he travels through a portal to a magical realm, where he becomes a sword-wielding dynamo battling against the evil Rat King and his minions. The Rat King wants access to Zicky’s real world through the portal, if he can figure out how Zicky opens it every morning. In the meantime, during the day, Zicky is just a little kid with a binky around his neck, telling stories about his adventures to his parents and siblings, who just think he’s playing make-believe… until the dangers come crashing into their world.

This is actually based on stories that Cape and his two kids made up about a baby Zicky and his adventures, now brought to life as a comic book. It has some of the hallmarks of a kid-written story in it, with over-the-top action scenes and silly tropes, and it’s illustrated in a manga-inspired style with exaggerated facial expressions and lots of zoom lines. It’s billed as a book for ages 9+, though it’s also somewhat gory: Zicky beheads a rat minion with his sword within the first few pages. It also wasn’t entirely clear to me how old the real-world Zicky was supposed to be: he’s not in school yet, but he doesn’t entirely act or look like a toddler anymore. It’s definitely an imaginative story, though, and a fun example of a dad creating something with his kids and then bringing it to life.

Inbetweens by Faith Erin Hicks

Sloane and Ash are twin sisters who have dreamed of becoming animators ever since fourth grade, when they went on the Magic of Animation ride at Disney World. Now they’re in high school, and they have the opportunity to attend Ormindale College’s summer animation program. But Ash finds that animation is a little harder than she expected, and while Sloane uncharacteristically makes some friends in the program, she isn’t so sure that animation is what she wants to do after all.

Faith Erin Hicks is just so great at coming-of-age stories, about teenagers figuring things out about themselves and each other, and Inbetweens is another example of just that. It’s about two sisters navigating the shifts in their relationship with each other, and also about what happens when you meet kindred spirits who introduce you to new experiences. (The story is set in the early ’90s, and one of the other students introduces them to anime for the first time.) It’s also about disillusionment: one of the animation instructors is Ash’s hero—but although she absolutely adores his first movie (a very Iron Giant–like cartoon), she gradually realizes that he’s not actually such a great person and might not be the one whose advice she needs the most.

It’s also just a fun look at animation, something that I’ve always loved. Hicks has worked in animation herself, and has put a little of her own experience in Sloane’s and Ash’s story.

The Corus Wave by Karenza Sparks

Lorelei is a geology grad student, working on a thesis about an odd star-shaped fossil, when she finds an obscure reference to Havius Corus. Corus was a 19th-century polymath who apparently proposed some really weird theory about the universe that was rejected by the scientific community, and then died in obscurity, with his theory of the “Corus Wave” lost to history. Her only lead is an eccentric local archivist in a town where Corus had designed several prominent structures, and she and her housemate Eddie find themselves on a scavenger hunt that may finally reveal Corus’s abandoned theory.

This one was pretty fun—a little bit of mystery, a little bit of mystical thought, and a little bit Scooby-Doo style meddling. The book itself is in black and white, which is a bit of a shame because the colors on the cover are so striking, and the illustrations—which were created in Clip Studio Paint, according to the copyright page—do have a style that reminds me of early-2000s webtoons. I really enjoyed the story, though, and there’s a certain charm to the basic-looking font used in the speech bubbles and the simplified drawing style.

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

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

Today’s stack is about sequels and series! As I was going through my never-ending queue of comic books, I noticed I had a pretty big stack of books from series, including quite a few where I had the first two books of a series that I hadn’t started yet. For today, I’m mostly covering continuing series that aren’t totally new to me, and I’ll save the others for later.

A silly peek behind the curtain: My family is used to me holing up on Sunday evenings to write my Stack Overflow columns: I often try to get started earlier in the week, but unfortunately I still have the habit of just working up until a deadline—part of that comes from having so many things I could write about at any given time, so I have a hard time choosing until I absolutely have to. Even when I start writing a column ahead of time (as I did with last week’s stack of comics about artists), I tend to read a big stack of books first, and then write them up all at once after the fact. My daughter saw me at my desk with the pile of books, flipping back through them to check what I wanted to say about each one, and she asked me: wouldn’t it be easier to write about each book right after you finished reading it, instead of having to go back and re-read sections later? Well, sure, maybe. But I often don’t know if I’ll have enough books for a topic until after I’ve read several and they start piling up! At any rate, I’m sure my process is not as efficient as it could be, but old habits die hard.

Squire & Knight 2: Wayward Travelers by Scott Chantler

I covered the first Squire & Knight book in the same comics grab-bag as Eowulf: it pairs a bookish squire with a brash, mostly clueless knight. In this book, they’re escorting young Cade to his wizard school … and they’re lost. The forest is a maze, there are gnolls on the hunt, and there’s a knight in the way who’s just as loud and obnoxious as Sir Kelton. But Squire’s smart, right? He’s got books and maps and surely he’ll be able to figure things out instead of charging around in circles like the knight.

Unfortunately, no. In this one, it turns out that Squire can also be overconfident, and he needs to be reminded of what he signed up to do. There’s a little more of Squire’s background through some flashback scenes, though Chantler still stops short of ever giving us Squire’s name. While Sir Kelton is still obnoxious, this second volume does manage to show that at least sometimes he can still be useful.

DnDoggos 2: Spells Like Trouble by Scout Underhill

Here’s the second book in a series about dogs playing RPGs. (Read more about the first book here.) Having completed their first adventure, the dogs get to level up, gaining some new abilities and stats. And just in time, because Squish, the mayor’s son, is off on another adventure—he says Maxila has escaped and kidnapped his dad. What is Maxila up to? The dogs are also joined by their friend Toast, a cat who loves casting spells but is a bit chaotic (of course).

As with the first book, this one jumps back and forth between the world of the game, in which the character drawings are detailed and fantastical, and the real world, where much simpler versions of them sit around the table, rolling dice. It makes for a very fun story and shows what it’s like to play an RPG, illustrating both what’s happening in reality and what the players see in their mind’s eye.

The Books of Clash Volume 6 written by Gene Luen Yang, illustrated by Kendall Goode and Alison Acton

I first mentioned The Books of Clash back in 2023, and the series is still going strong. For a series based on mobile games (Clash of Clans and Clash Royale), I didn’t really expect a whole lot from these at first, though I’ve long been a fan of Gene Luen Yang. What I found was that I’ve really enjoyed diving into this wacky world of the games, and that Yang has done a great job of bringing these characters to life. In particular, each book takes one or two characters, who are usually just one of countless clones in the game, and gives them a back story and unique personality that sets them apart from the others.

This book centers on two skeletons, the twin siblings Riley and Wylie. Their uncle Skullgar set off (way back in Book 1) to get his battle machine repaired—but now the twins get word that he’s in trouble, far away on Mystery Island. The book is narrated by Riley, who doesn’t care for surprises and really wants everything planned out in advance. Meanwhile, Wylie is impulsive and up for anything, as long as it is EPIC. That’s becomes the main source of tension in this volume, as Riley gets tired of constantly having to cover for her brother’s “Leeroy Jenkins” tactics. As you might guess, both twins learn a thing or two about each other and how sometimes their sibling might actually be right.

The Books of Clash have quickly become one of my daughter’s favorite series, too, even though neither of us has actually played the games they’re based on. She’s read through the whole series countless times already, and I know we’re both looking forward to more in the future.

Space Chasers 2: To the Moon written by Leland Melvin and Joe Caramagna, illustrated by Alison Acton

The kid astronauts are back! In the first volume (covered in this column), Steven got injured and was cut from the mission while he had physical therapy to recover. Part of this book follows his story while he was absent, and then continues the story as the team heads to the moon: in preparation for expanding to a bigger outpost, the team will be helping to investigate the recent moonquakes. But ever since Steven got back, his teammates have been acting a little weird around him.

Everyone really wants to make sure that Steven—who uses a wheelchair—feels like part of the team. But the way they treat him just makes him feel more out of place. The book shows how it’s important for them to lean on each other’s strengths to solve problems, but a lot of the tension comes from some miscommunications, partially overheard conversations. Some of the major problems could have been avoided if the characters had actually just talked to each other instead of tiptoeing around each other—not my favorite trope. Overall, though, it was still a fun story, mixing in some real space science with the plot.

Sidekicks 2: Thick as Thieves by Dan Santat

Here’s a blast from the past: the first Sidekicks book came out back in 2011! It had been long enough since I’d last read this that I’d forgotten a lot of the initial plot, other than that it features animal sidekicks. In this new volume, Captain Amazing, a superhero with a peanut allergy, has now retired and is on vacation. But there’s been a data breach, and information about the world’s superheroes has been leaked! It’s up to the pet sidekicks—Manny the cat, Roscoe the dog, Fluffy the hamster, and Shifty the chameleon—to save the day.

Then Whipley—Shifty’s long-lost brother—shows up at the house. While Shifty is overjoyed to reconnect, the other animals are skeptical. Is Whipley actually here to help, or is he just working to frame the sidekicks? The story keeps the reader guessing what Whipley’s real intentions are, even as things come crashing to a conclusion at the World’s Biggest Ball of Yarn (where Captain Amazing and his sister are attending Crochet-Con).

The tricky thing about long-awaited sequels is that, as far as the kids go, their tastes may have changed significantly. My oldest was in elementary school when the first book was originally published, and now she’s almost done with college! So it’s probably a little too late for her, but if you’ve got middle grade readers, now you’ve got two books you can add to their reading list.

Adventuregame Comics 2: The Beyond by Jason Shiga

The first Adventuregame Comics: Leviathan came out in 2022, and The Beyond followed in 2023 but I somehow didn’t get around to it until just recently. Jason Shiga’s Meanwhile was a mind-blowing, ground-breaking experiment in comics that let you choose different paths for the main character to take. His Adventuregame Comics use a somewhat similar mechanic, with little “tubes” that connect one panel to the next, often traveling in unusual directions so you don’t just read everything left to right, top to bottom. Where Meanwhile used a bunch of little tabs to jump from one page to another, Adventuregame Comics have a simpler system where a tube might just lead to a little box with a page number in it, and you jump to that page.

In this story, the nameless main character dies—but that’s not really a spoiler alert. It’s actually what kicks off the real story, which involves exploring the Beyond. He winds up in a weird parlor, where he is instructed that he can travel into the world of different books by placing them on a special table. For you, as a reader, it means that you’re trying to collect books throughout the story, because each one is numbered and will let you jump to that page number of the comic book. Do you want to go on a pirate adventure? Woo the beautiful Lady Rose of Wiltshire?

One of the interesting things about The Beyond is that while you can just read it and follow the various paths to see where they go, there’s also a puzzle to be solved. You’re presented with some hints, but the book-portal-table allows for jumping to new numbers to see where they go, and the trick is figuring out how to arrive at the right number to get to a new ending.

There is in fact a third volume as well, Samurai vs. Ninja, but I seem to have lost track of it. Hopefully I’ll turn that up soon.

Eowulf 2: The Creature Connection by Mike Cavallaro

In the second book of the series (mentioned in this comics grab-bag), Eowulf has gotten a part-time job at Vulcan’s Celestial Shop. Her job is to transport the Helm of Balor to a movie studio and keep an eye on it—it’s a real artifact, but it has a safety lock on it so that it can’t be used. But things don’t go as smoothly as expected, and pretty soon Eowulf finds herself digging into missing magical creatures. In the meantime, her friends in Arcadia have their hands full with a realm that seems to be filling up with … snot? Oh, and Eowulf’s parents still want her to clean her room. It’s another mythical adventure, filled with friendly monsters and dark conspiracies, and I was impressed with the way Cavallaro manages to tie all the threads together by the end.

Bone: More Tall Tales by Jeff Smith with Tom Sniegoski

Bone is a fantastic series that is 35 years old this year, but is still finding new readers—it’s a fantasy story about the cartoony bald-headed Bone cousins that mixes in the absurd and the silly with some truly creepy baddies. The original 55-issue series was then collected into 9 volumes (and there are also omnibus editions if you want just one huge book), and it has also had several spin-off books including some illustrated novels.

More Tall Tales is a follow-up to Tall Tales (from 2010!), and features the Bone cousins along with the three Bone scouts and Bartleby, the young rat creature, following the events of the main series. The characters are traveling together—an activity that includes its own adventures—and they sit around the campfire swapping stories, which are illustrated by a variety of artists. Jeff Smith provides the framing story, and then most of the tales are written by Tom Sniegoski.

I always welcome a chance to spend a little more time in the Bone world now that the epic tale is over, and these books are the perfect way to do that.

Suitor Armor Volume 3 by Purpah

I’ve written about the first two books in this series here and here, where I included them in books about artificial intelligence and alien intelligence, though it’s not exactly that. Modeus is a suit of armor, brought to life through magic, but he turns out to be more intelligent than the court mage had planned. In fact, despite the fact that Modeus is soon able to speak, ask questions, and show evidence of having opinions, most of the other characters in the book still refer to him as “it.” Lucia is the exception, and has been trying to convince others of Modeus’s personhood, with a little bit of success in certain cases.

Volume 3 starts getting pretty dark. I mean, there has been a lot of talk before about the war between the humans and the fairies, but this book begins with an explanation of what happened from an elf’s perspective, and it involves a lot of cruelty and treachery from the humans. Lucia—who is secretly an fairy living among the humans—quickly begins to see that the elf spoke the truth, and that humans have been using “the war” as an excuse to oppress and demonize fairies. Lucia’s own safety at the castle is threatened, and her relationship with Lady Kirsi starts to feel some strain, too.

While I don’t think the book is strictly allegorical, it’s easy to find parallels between the story and things that have happened and are happening now in the real world. We know how easy it can be to dehumanize our enemies, to use vague threats and the fear of danger to excuse horrific actions. And many of us also know what it’s like to feel threatened by those in power, having to choose between hiding our true selves or being punished. Suitor Armor wraps some serious topics into a fantasy love story, and I’m eager to see what happens next.

City Spies: Europa by James Ponti

We’ve reached book 7 in the City Spies series! Just out this week, this volume finds the kid spy team after some big shake-ups in the previous book. They managed to foil a big plot from the shadowy crime syndicate Umbra and captured its leader, but they also lost their headquarters and have moved to a stand-in location in London. But Umbra is still at work, and the leader has been coordinating a series of attacks from prison. MI6 has intercepted cryptic messages, and it’s up to the kids to figure them out: where will the attacks take place? And are they somehow connected to Clementine, the double agent with close ties to the City Spies?

This book takes the kids all over Europe, and I love the way that Ponti works a lot of real-world facts into his stories. In this one, the kids are getting a lot of lessons on the history of spycraft (particularly British spycraft), so they learn about Violette Szabo, a spy who was captured and killed during World War II, and Operation Mincemeat, which was used to trick Germany into sending troops to the wrong place. These facts aren’t just used as trivia for the reader, but also have deeper connections to the plot. Ponti also does a good job of mixing up tense, action-packed scenes and some levity and humor—these are still kids, after all. Though, I gotta say, claiming that a reference to The Princess Bride was an “inside joke that only the two of them would understand”? Inconceivable!

The Art of Zootopia 2 by Kalikolehua Hurley 

Okay, technically this book isn’t a sequel—it’s an art book about a sequel—but I decided to squeeze it into today’s column anyway. Zootopia took us back to this animal metropolis, and the odd-couple partnership between Judy Hopps, bunny cop, and Nick Wilde, fox conman (who is also now on the police force). Despite my dislike of copaganda, I do still enjoy detective stories and I liked the world of Zootopia, with all of the ways that one city accommodates such entirely different animals.

One of those accommodations is the enormous weather walls between the different climate zones of Zootopia, allowing blistering deserts and freezing snowscapes to coexist next door to each other, and they’re one of the central plot points of the second film. They were invented by the city’s founder, Ebenezer Lynxley, part of the reason the Lynxley family still has so much power and fortune a century later. But now there’s a snake on the loose in Zootopia—something unheard of! It turns out that reptiles once coexisted in Zootopia along with the mammals, and Judy and Nick have to get to the bottom of a massive cover-up.

The art book is a great exploration of a lot of the design concepts for the movie: all of the wacky animal-themed buildings and vehicles and products, character designs, and entire environments. This movie introduced the Marsh Market, a section of Zootopia for aquatic and semi-aquatic mammals, so there are closer looks at some of the details there. I always love the pages with all the punny signs and logos that are easily missed when watching the films.

The book does give away a lot of the plot points, so I don’t recommend reading this before you’ve seen it if you want to avoid spoilers, but if you’re a fan of the movie, this one is fun to pore over.

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

I’ve mentioned before that I have a growing box of comic biographies and memoirs, and this year I’m going to make a concerted effort to read through them. I’ve started with this stack of comics about creators: authors, filmmakers, painters, and more. Several of these books also paired up nicely with each other.

Today’s stack is extra-large because I’ve had several weeks to accumulate them! With our various New Year posts (resolutions, reflections, and favorites), I haven’t written a regular column in a while, so I’ve just been plugging away at this one in the meantime. (Several of these titles are older books that were unavailable on Bookshop.org, so in those cases I’ve included links to the publisher websites instead.) I also noticed that the list is pretty male-dominated, which is unfortunate, but these are the particular comics I have on hand that all fit into the artist/author category, so I’ll see what I’ve got for a different category for the next column.

Magritte: This is not a biography written by Vincent Zabus, illustrated by Thomas Campi
Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles written and illustrated by Fermín Solís

These two books about surrealists are from SelfMadeHero; Magritte is translated from French and Buñuel is translated from Spanish.

Magritte is indeed not a biography of the surrealist painter, but a surreal fictional tale: Charles buys a bowler hat, only to find that he cannot take it off. This bowler once belonged to Magritte himself, and Charles has now entered Magritte’s bizarre, topsy-turvy world. He must delve into Magritte’s life story and his work to be freed of the hat. Throughout the story, some of Magritte’s famous paintings make their way into the frames of the comic: the train coming through the fireplace, the man with an apple hanging in front of his face, the reverse mermaid with the legs of woman and the body and head of a fish. We do get some biographical details about Magritte, but whenever the artist himself shows up in the story, he’s mostly antagonistic and does not want Charles digging into his past. It is a strange but fitting way to learn about Magritte. (Though it may be a little harder to find now, since it’s several years old.)

Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles is a little less surreal, though there are some dream sequences here and there where things get weird. This book mostly follows Luis Buñuel while he is working on his third film, Las Hurdes, a sort of documentary about the extreme poverty in the town of La Alberca. There are some references to his first two films, which he made with Salvador Dalí (but then ultimately had a falling out during the making of the second). Here, he is primarily in conversation with Ramón Acín, who funded his film: they have some conversations prior to the filming, and then the two of them are depicted on the shoot, which had all sorts of difficulties. This comic was originally published in 2008 in Spanish, and was adapted into an animated film in 2018.

Both of the books are intriguing, but not comprehensive. They seem to assume the reader already knows at least a little about their subjects, or that they’ll go look them up. I didn’t know a whole lot about Buñuel in particular outside of his connection with Dalí through the two films, so it was interesting to see a bit more of his tale in this book.

Muybridge by Guy Delisle

Whether you’ve heard the name Eadward Muybridge before, you’ve most likely seen some of his work. The most famous is probably his series of photographs showing a galloping horse, each a frozen moment in time. The photos finally settled a longstanding debate about how horses actually galloped, and whether all four legs were ever off the ground at the same time. I’d seen those photos before (and many of the others that Muybridge took, of other animals, of people performing various actions), but what I didn’t know was how much time and money was spent to capture those images on film, or why.

This book (translated from French) is both a biography of Muybridge and a history of the photograph. When Muybridge first left England for the US in 1850, daguerrotypes were all the rage, and Muybridge eventually got a job working for a portrait photographer. People were amazed at how realistic they were, even though sitting for a portrait meant holding a pose for several minutes—but Muybridge was disappointed in them, feeling that they were stiff and unnatural. Instead, he quit and took photos of Yosemite Valley, a difficult task that meant hauling heavy equipment around and developing his plates on-site in a little tent. Those photos brought him fame, and eventually he was hired by Leland Stanford, railroad baron, to photograph his estate.

It was that relationship that led to the photographs of the horse, because Stanford wanted evidence about the way a horse galloped. The project took over 6 years and the equivalent of over a million dollars, but Muybridge kept experimenting as cameras and film continued to improve. He developed a machine that also let him play back his still photos in a sequence to create motion, amazing audiences. (He even met Thomas Edison and proposed a collaboration between his images and Edison’s sound … but of course Edison just stole the idea and started working on his own movie projector.)

There’s a lot more to Muybridge’s story, too: murder, betrayal, and a long struggle for recognition and success even though he pioneered so many technological breakthroughs. I really enjoyed this book; the illustrations are cartoony, but we do get to see many of Muybridge’s actual photographs (as well as Delisle’s illustrated versions in some cases). We also get to see a lot of paintings of horses! That’s something that I hadn’t ever really thought about, but up until 1878, artists just weren’t absolutely sure what a horse in motion actually looked like, leading to all sorts of strange portrayals. Muybridge’s techniques paved the way for understanding creatures in motion, which has also been foundational to the world of animation.

Tolkien: Lighting Up the Darkness written by Willy Duraffourg, illustrated by Giancarlo Caracuzzo
The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien by John Hendrix

Both of these books feature J. R. R. Tolkien, but while The Mythmakers centers his relationship with C. S. Lewis, Tolkien: Lighting Up the Darkness seems to omit it entirely.

Tolkien: Lighting Up The Darkness puts a lot of focus on World War I, and the effects it had on Tolkien and his community of friends, particularly those of the TCBS—the “Tea Club, Barovian Society.” There are brief flashbacks to Tolkien’s childhood, and we also spend some time with him in college, but the war overshadows everything. The book shows how writing was the way that Tolkien and his friends sought meaning and life even while facing a war that seemed hopeless and senseless.

The Mythmakers has a lot more breadth to it, in part because of its format. Most of it is a graphic novel, but there are also sections that are mostly prose with accompanying illustrations. This one is narrated by two characters, a lion and a wizard, who aren’t exactly stand-ins for Lewis and Tolkien, but are at least inspired by their characters. The two of them take the reader on a journey through some of the philosophies behind the writing: they talk about story and legend and myth, and the way that Lewis and Tolkien thought about them. It’s a more fanciful approach and includes a lot of humor, but feels appropriate for the men who wrote about hobbits and Narnia. This book also focuses on their faith: Tolkien’s faith that grew from his childhood roots, contrasted with Lewis’ longer journey from skepticism to atheism to Christianity. While there is mention of the TBCS and some of the other people who influenced the two writers, Hendrix really centers the relationship between these two men and shows how they inspired each other, but also the ways that they started to drift apart as well.

Hokusai: A Graphic Biography written by Francesco Matteuzzi, illustrated by Giuseppe Latanza

Under the Great Wave Off Kanagawa is an instantly recognizable image that has been reproduced, remixed, and parodied in countless ways. It’s the most famous of Hokusai’s prints, but it is just one of countless works made under the most famous name he went by over the course of his life. (Although it was common for Japanese artists to change their names, sometimes reflecting the master they were working under, Hokusai was exceptional, with at least 30 different names.) Aside from woodblock prints, he also made ukiyo-e prints, illustrated postcards, satirical pamphlets, erotic shunga art, manga, and instructional art manuals.

This book, translated from Italian, follows the life of this prolific Japanese artist, who was constantly pushing the boundaries. I didn’t know how structured Japanese art traditions were at the time, with competing schools, but Hokusai chafed at those restrictions and wanted nothing more than to be free—neither a pupil nor a master, but able to create whatever art he wanted. His artwork not only shaped Japanese traditions, but also had a huge influence on European art. In the afterword, Matteuzzi admits that some of the stories about Hokusai must have been exaggerated or fabricated, but it’s hard to know for sure. Like Stan Lee (more on him a few entries below!), Hokusai told a lot of stories about himself to create a particular image.

Banksy: A Graphic Novel written by Francesco Matteuzzi, illustrated by Marco Maraggi
Keith Haring: The Story of His Life by Paolo Parisi

Both of these artist biographies are from the publisher Prestel and are translated from Italian, and feature artists with strong, often countercultural messages in their art, challenging the status quo and disrupting traditions of the art world.

The Banksy book takes an oblique approach to telling the story of the well-known (yet still unidentified) street artist, with a fictional framing story. Adam is caught by the police spray-painting graffiti, and Claire—who had been trying to track down Banksy—got lumped in as an accomplice. The two of them are sentenced to community service, painting over graffiti. Over the course of their service, they have conversations about street art and Banksy in particular, which Claire uses to make videos for her channel.

The book’s pages are printed with a cream colored texture, making them look a little like an unpainted wall. Claire and Adam share a lot of stories about Banksy’s exploits and visit the sites of some of his famous pieces. Of course, since Banksy’s true identity is still unknown, some of the biographical material is unverified, but the various shows and events that Banksy organized are more factual. Although the story does incorporate some visual elements borrowed from Banksy—balloons, rats—and uses them in fanciful, somewhat surreal ways, it never actually shows any examples of Banksy’s own art, which seemed a little odd. Several of the other books in today’s stack include writing excerpts and photographs or reproductions of the subject’s work, but for some reason this book about a visual artist does not include any of the actual art.

That’s also true of the Keith Haring biography, which makes me wonder if it was the publisher’s choice. As with the Banksy book, this one never actually shows any of Haring’s drawings. The closest you get is a few illustrations where you see Haring in the act of drawing and the beginnings of his iconic figures are taking shape. Since this book does include reproductions of some non-Haring signs and posters, it’s unclear why none of Haring’s art is included.

The book draws a lot from Haring’s journals, which he kept for 12 years leading up to his death, so we get to see a lot of his story in his own words. There are occasional parts that are told by other people, but mostly Haring himself serves as the narrator. The book’s illustrations are done in vibrant magenta, yellow, and blue—not exactly the same palette Haring used, but it does evoke his bold, colorful style. Though I’ve been familiar with Haring’s artwork and knew a little bit about his life, this book did deepen my appreciation for his journey as an artist and the way he used his work as activism.

Of the two, the Keith Haring book felt a little more informative; the conversations between Adam and Claire felt a little stilted at times, squeezing in a lot of information that didn’t feel like a natural conversation. But I definitely would have appreciated the inclusion of the artwork itself.

Flung Out of Space: Inspired by the Indecent Adventures of Patricia Highsmith written by Grace Ellis, illustrated by Hannah Templer
I Am Stan: A Graphic Biography of the Legendary Stan Lee by Tom Scioli

I honestly didn’t know much about Patricia Highsmith prior to reading this book, other than remembering that she wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley (of which I’d seen the film but had never read the book). She wrote many psychological thrillers (including several more about Ripley), but this comic book biography mostly focuses on the period leading up to her second novel, The Price of Salt (later republished as Carol). Highsmith is a conflicted person: she is a lesbian who keeps trying to get “cured.” She drinks too much, makes racist comments, and is destructive both to herself and those around her. But she also wrote a book that changed the face of lesbian fiction: unlike most writing about gay characters at the time, it had a hopeful ending.

This book follows Highsmith as she’s trying to get Strangers on a Train (her first novel) published. Meanwhile, she’s writing comics to make ends meet but she hates her job and doesn’t want her name on them because she wants to be taken seriously as a writer. She’s in therapy and is dating a guy to prove that she’s getting better, but somehow keeps winding up in bed with women anyway. The book doesn’t paint Highsmith as a hero, but it also depicts the struggles of being a writer, of being gay in the 1950s, and the early days of comic books before they became the entertainment behemoth that they are now. (Stan Lee even makes an appearance briefly.)

I really enjoyed this one; Ellis does a good job capturing Highsmith as a complex, flawed person, and Templer’s illustrations are excellent and really feel like they fit the time period they’re portraying. I may put a few of Highsmith’s novels on my reading list for sometime down the road.

So what does this have to do with Stan Lee? Well, as it turns out, Stan Lee, the king of cameos, shows up in Flung Out of Space, playing himself. Highsmith gets introduced to him and they spend an evening talking about comics and writing as he tries to convince her to write for him. He also ends up hitting on her, which immediately turns her off … though apparently she does end up writing for him anyway.

That scene doesn’t turn up in I Am Stan, but it certainly wouldn’t be out of place. Tom Scioli’s biography is not an authorized biography, and as such it does not always show Lee in a favorable light. The book pulls from a host of different sources: interviews (with Lee and others), books, public appearances, and more. At times it feels more like a chronological collection of anecdotes than a cohesive story—many of the scenes last a single page, and there are some pages that almost feel like a movie montage scene. Stanley Lieber trying out a bunch of extracurricular activities at school. Stanley trying to find a job. Stan Lee meeting and talking to comic book artists, one after another.

Strung together, though, all of these little bits do add up to a compelling portrait of a man who really was legendary—even if some of those legends were ones that he made up himself. Stan Lee was full of contradictions. You see a kid who wouldn’t give up (in part because of the way his mom believed in him), who loved reading stories and telling stories, who helped turn Marvel Comics into the behemoth it is now. But you also see somebody who was forever under the thumb of his cousin Martin, who ran the magazine company. He belittled his artists and praised them; he took credit for everything himself but was good at passing the buck. He was an innovator, and he was forever chasing trends.

One of the things that still seems remarkable to me—though this isn’t the first time I’ve read about it—was his “Marvel method” of creating comics. Lee would provide the artist with a brief outline or idea of a story (sometimes based on a character design the artist had invented), and then the artist would just illustrate the whole thing without a script. Lee would then come back later and create the dialogue after the fact. Compared to the way most comics are made now, it feels absurd that this would ever have worked, but those stories and characters resonated with readers.

Toward the end of his life, Lee was beloved for his appearances in Marvel movies and was always a hit at conventions, even as controversy swirled around his claims about creating popular characters. He signed away the rights to his image, and then tried to sue to get them back. There were lawsuits about elder abuse involving his business manager, and even as Stan Lee had become a profitable brand, Lee himself was in decline and it seems like he wasn’t always clear on what was happening.

Both Highsmith and Lee were larger-than-life storytellers, and these books give us a glimpse of their complicated, often contradictory personalities.

Fire!! The Zora Neale Hurston Story by Peter Bagge

Zora Neale Hurston is another author that I knew very little about, and I hadn’t read anything by her—another oversight that I hope to correct. This book, a little like I Am Stan, is a whole lot of short vignettes, usually just a page or two, showing scenes from Hurston’s life in chronological order. Unlike I Am Stan, though, there’s a lot more text packed into every page. The individual frames of the comic are fairly small, and Bagge packs in the speech bubbles in every frame. Not only that, but there are nearly 30 pages of endnotes at the back, providing a little background and fun details about many of the scenes. The endnotes also include a lot of photographs of Hurston and many of the other people and publications referenced in the comic.

What I found was an absorbing story about a spirited, fiercely independent, and often controversial Black woman who never seemed to settle down for long. She grew up in an all-Black community in Florida and loved the culture there, but had trouble portraying it without being criticized as pandering or perpetrating stereotypes. She had many romantic relationships, but had no interest in becoming dependent on a man (or trapped at home), and would rather be poor if it meant she was independent. Her writing found success, but even so financial security was always fleeting—she once got a job as a housemaid even after she was a well-known writer to make ends meet.

Bagge’s illustrations are very cartoony; he depicts everyone in his usual style, with somewhat oversized heads and exaggerated features, spaghetti-noodle limbs curving around. But even though the images are a bit caricatured, you can tell that he takes his subject seriously. This book is very well-researched, and Bagge tries to give us a comprehensive picture of this multi-faceted author. I recommend checking it out!

Orwell written by Pierre Christin, illustrated by Sébastien Verdier
Mrs. Orwell written by Andrea Chalupa, illustrated by Brahm Revel

Everyone knows who George Orwell is, right? The guy who gave us Animal Farm and 1984, the reason that “Orwellian” was coined to signify totalitarian dystopias. But, I have to admit, I didn’t actually know a whole lot about Orwell himself—not even some of the most basic things, like the fact that George Orwell was a pseudonym and his real name was Eric Blair.

Orwell is a sweeping look at his entire life; the portion about his childhood is fairly brief but provides some background about his home life and unpleasant boarding schooling years. He also spent time in Burma as an imperial police, and both his journey there and his experiences (which included shooting a rampaging elephant) informed his opinions on imperialism and inspired his first novel, Burmese Days. Much of the book is like this, alternating between Orwell’s life experiences and his writing, showing what shaped his views of the world. Like Tolkien, Orwell also fought as a soldier—he was badly injured in the Spanish Civil War, which kept him out of the field for World War II. The book itself is illustrated mostly in black and white realistic style, but there are occasional sections contributed by other artists that are in color and in different styles.

Mrs. Orwell is about Eileen O’Shaughnessy Blair, Orwell’s first wife, and in particular her relationship with Orwell. Although she does make an appearance in Orwell, her significance in Orwell’s life is severely underrepresented. This book shows Eileen as somebody who was smart, passionate, and resourceful: when she and her fellow typists weren’t happy with their employer, she poached them and started her own office. The book is a love story, showing Eileen and Eric meeting for the first time and his attempts to court her (she didn’t accept his first proposal). Their relationship was built not just on affection and attraction but also a shared sense of justice: shortly after their marriage, Orwell went to fight fascists in Spain, and Eileen followed and found work as a typist so she could stay in closer contact.

But the book is also about the huge influence Eileen had on Orwell: not only did she type and edit much of his work—putting much of her own work on hold—she also inspired him and pushed him. Without her, Animal Farm would have been an essay rather than a fable, and probably wouldn’t have had the lasting influence it has now. Even more: without her, Orwell may have been captured in Barcelona and we might not have had Animal Farm or 1984 at all.

It was definitely interesting to read these two books back-to-back. Orwell provided a broader overview of his life, but Mrs. Orwell filled in a crucial missing piece. As Chalupa says in the afterword, many of Orwell scholars were men and simply overlooked Eileen’s contributions, an oversight that I’m glad this book addresses.

Zodiac: A Graphic Memoir by Ai Weiwei with Elettra Stamboulis, illustrated by Gianluca Constantini

Ai Weiwei is an activist and dissident who has used various media to criticize China’s government. This memoir depicts Ai having conversations—often with his young son—about a range of topics: his own family background, Chinese folklore, thoughts about art, and more. The book is organized into 12 chapters, one for each animal of the zodiac; within each chapter Ai references some of the traits that the animal represents, and many of them also include a bit of the traditional story about the creation of the zodiac, the great race between the animals that resulted in the ordering of the animals.

I particularly liked the back-and-forth between father and son, because his son is curious and asks questions, and Ai has a thoughtful way of talking through his experiences, and it feels like he is processing them even as he relates them. While I had known that Ai had been arrested by the Chinese government, I didn’t know about his background: his father, Ai Qing, was a poet and had been exiled, so Ai grew up in a labour camp and in exile until he was a teenager, an experience that informed his own understanding of China.

There was a time when I would have said that human rights violations and issues with democracy were primarily something that happened in other countries, that the US served as a refuge for people like Ai who were fleeing persecution and retribution for sharing their views. But now it is becoming more and more evident that we have our own problems right here at home; Ai is an example of somebody who has been able to use his art as a way to speak up and engage people about injustice, and I appreciated this glimpse into his life.

Disclosure: I received review copies of these books. Affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support my writing and independent bookstores. When unavailable, I have included links to the publisher websites instead.

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.

I read many, many comics throughout the year (as you may have gathered if you follow Stack Overflow), and a great deal of those, particularly the ones for middle grade and young adults, tend to be smallish paperbacks, similar to a typical paperback novel. While they can vary in length to some degree, a lot of them are somewhere close to 200 pages—there’s kind of a “typical” size, and I have big stacks of them in my “to read” pile. I’ll pick a stack of them from my office and sit down and read throughout a day; my daughter usually has at least one of these at hand at the dining table to read while she eats.

And then there are the big books. Large format, often hardcover, sometimes the size of a picture book but usually much thicker. These tomes say, “Hey! Put everything else down for a minute because you’re gonna need both hands for this.” There’s more room for the artwork to spread across the page, or more pages so the story can take a little more time to unspool. And some artists use the space to do very weird and interesting things with the format.

So, today: a big stack of these big comic books. Make room!

The Five Wolves by Peter McCarty

Here’s an example of an artist really playing around with the medium. Peter McCarty is well-known for his picture books, often featuring animals or kids that remind me a bit of those Squishmallow plush toys: rounded and soft, with small stubby limbs. His illustration style is immediately recognizable for the soft, almost glowing look achieved with countless tiny little marks.

While the pictures in The Five Wolves still have that same quality and are mostly monochrome, the book itself is a good deal bigger than his usual picture books, at nearly 300 pages. The plot is strange and absurd, starting with the five wolves at sea (and painting portraits of a fish), arguing with a boatful of cats, encountering the “flying yorbas,” and taking advice from a rabbit with “42” on its chest. The book is rectangular, and large enough that most of the illustrations have wide margins all around, or sometimes appear letterboxed with margins on top and bottom—though sometimes there are figures just on a plain blank background, too. (You can see a few examples of the interior on Macmillan’s website.)

What stands out in particular, though, is the text itself. Each page with text is itself an illustration, a dense mess of hand-written text (and the occasional drawing) fit into a rectangular block. Usually there are a few sentences in larger, bolded letters, and you could read just those to follow the story, and the effect would be a bit like reading a typical picture book. But you could also spend twenty minutes just scanning all the little text on a single page, meandering around the main “plot” text: some of it feels like a weird stream-of-consciousness that is only obliquely related to the story, and sometimes there are passages that make a little more sense. It really heightens the somewhat surreal aspect of the story. This is definitely a book I want to spend some more time with—maybe there’s some other hidden meanings I haven’t found yet!

Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne, adapted by Travis Dandro

This graphic novel adaptation of Winnie the Pooh stays pretty true to A. A. Milne’s original stories, but the characters themselves vary a bit in how closely they look like E. H. Shepard’s versions. Pooh and Piglet are fairly close (though Piglet’s nose is more square), and Eeyore is a little closer to the Disney version, but Rabbit and Christopher Robin were both changed significantly. (Fan-favorite Tigger didn’t appear until Milne’s second Pooh book, so he’s not in this one at all.)

Winnie the Pooh is one of my wife’s favorite kids’ books, so it’s one that we’ve read many times. There’s the story of Pooh pretending to be a cloud to get some honey, Piglet’s house getting flooded, Eeyore losing his tail, Pooh getting stuck in Rabbit’s doorway, and so on. Much of the dialogue is taken straight from the original stories, but Dandro has filled out the visuals to make it a full comic book.

Those who grew up with Shepard’s illustrations may find it a little hard to get used to Dandro’s versions—they’re close enough to look similar but not quite right, unlike the Disney versions that just went in a wholly different style. But for kids who are just discovering Winnie the Pooh now, this option might find some new fans who might have passed over the old-fashioned prose books.

The Super Hero’s Journey by Patrick McDonnell and Marvel Arts

Here’s another artist I’m familiar with, but illustrating a subject quite different from what I’m used to seeing. Patrick McDonnell is the cartoonist behind the Mutts comic strip, and he has also illustrated picture books (like A Perfectly Messed-Up Story from 2014). Here, he tells a story about his own love of comics as well as some of his worldview and philosophy of life, viewed through the lens of Marvel characters. The book includes many excerpts from old Marvel comics (usually untouched but occasionally modified a little for story purposes), interspersed with McDonnell’s versions of the characters.

Doctor Doom is using the power of the Negative Zone to bring despair and discord across the planet, and the various heroes from the Marvel universe end up fighting each other. As the Watcher observes, he sees that Reed Richards—Mister Fantastic—seems to be a kindred spirit, searching for a way to fight the despair. They end up traveling through other classic comics, but ultimately Mister Fantastic has to look inside himself.

It’s a somewhat strange but deeply personal adventure, and serves as McDonnell’s love letters to both Marvel and the wider world of comics itself.

He Lost His Keys in Space by Luke Milton and Lizzy Lang

Vega Ulysses is Earth’s first ambassador, sent on a twelve-year mission of galactic diplomacy for which he was completely unsuited. He was supposed to travel to various planets to build relationships and share what’s great about Earth—but his journey was filled with poor choices and open hostilities. But now he’s done, and ready to head back home to Earth … except he can’t find the keys to his fortress home. So he takes his crew and goes back to retrace his steps, hoping to discover where he left his keys behind. We get flashbacks of his original trip, and see how the planets are faring years later as a result of his visits.

Vega has almost no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He’s more of a Zapp Brannigan than a Captain Picard, and he ruins pretty much every planet he lands on in one way or another. A planet of community-minded musicians gets turned into a capitalist consumer nightmare (involving a Garfield-inspired cartoon); his mission to establish trade routes resulted in the assassination of the planet’s leader. His crewmates include Zax Snaxston, who is constantly trying to see the good in Vega, and Vanessica Planders, who has seen enough to know better.

It’s hard to say whether this book is a cautionary tale, warning us about the ways that humanity would be toxic to pretty much any alien life we encountered, or if it’s just meant to be a silly romp about a terrible person, but it’s definitely a comedy of errors.

Total THB Volume 1 by Paul Pope

THB is a comics series that Paul Pope self-published starting in 1994 until 2003, with additional short stories as recently as 2021. It’s now being collected into three large paperback volumes by 23rd Street Books; Volume 1 is currently available and Volume 2 is expected in July 2026.

THB stands for Tri-Hydro Bi-oxygenate—it’s a molecule introduced at the beginning of the book by Doctor Yukimoto, and it has some very unusual properties. Dormant, it looks like a tiny rubber ball, but adding water makes it immediately expand into a seven-foot tall, rubbery figure. THB is given to teenager HR Watson, the daughter of the head of Watson Robotics, as a secret security measure that very quickly becomes the talk of the school.

The story takes place on Mars, where humans have built some cities but much of the land is still vast expanses of desert. While HR thinks of THB as something between a toy and a companion, it turns out to be a necessary precaution because Mr. Watson has a lot of enemies, some of whom make an attempt to capture HR while Watson is away. HR turns out to be pretty resourceful herself even without THB—it is incredibly strong, but eventually its activation wears off and shrinks back into a little ball, often at very inconvenient times.

I hadn’t ever read THB before, but it does remind me a little of some of Paul Pope’s later books, Battling Boy and Aurora West. (I interviewed Pope about these in 2014.) There’s a strange world with its own rules and culture and background, and we get a small window into it by following a few of the characters around. THB‘s Mars has robots, both intelligent and not-so-intelligent, and there are also the Olmari, the native Martians, who have to some extent assimilated into Earthling culture. There are action sequences with agents attempting to capture HR, and there are quieter moments where HR is hanging out with her stepbrother or questioning THB about its nature. It’s a weird sort of story and I’m curious to see where it goes next!

Dune The Graphic Novel, Book 3: The Prophet adapted by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, illustrated by Raúl Allén and Patricia Martín

This is the final volume in a graphic novel adaptation of Dune, released over the past few years about the same time as the two-part film version, but although it carries the “Now a Major Motion Picture” text on the cover, it does not appear to rely too much on the films for its visuals (or the character portrayals). This third volume is where everything comes to a head: Paul Atreides becomes accepted as the leader of the Fremen but is also expected to follow their traditions, some of which he disagrees with. Baron Harkonnen has schemes in place to put his nephew in charge of Arrakis, and everything is leading up to one big final battle.

I actually have not read the original Dune novels, nor seen the films, so the graphic novels have really been my primary introduction to the story (well, those and the Dune: Imperium board game). So I can’t say how faithful an adaptation these are, though I imagine there are things that were omitted or abbreviated somewhat. The three volumes are now available together in a box set.

Drome by Jesse Lonergan

Drome is the most visually stunning comic I’ve read in a while, one that takes the comic book medium and pushes it in surprising directions. The plot itself is a creation myth of sorts: two celestial beings, Chaos and Order, darkness and light, both create people, who clash in various ways. Chaos’s humans immediately kill each other and subdue animals in service of making war. Order’s hero—the woman pictured on the cover—is sent to impose control, which leads to discipline, and then a flourishing of civilization. Like most myths, there is violence and sex, conflicts on earth that reflect the conflicts in the heavens.

What makes Drome remarkable, though, is the way the story is told. In particular, Lonergan incorporates the gutters—the white spaces between comic panels—as parts of the drawings themselves. The negative space feels almost solid at times. Some pages are a large grid of tiny squares, like the cover, but some of the squares are a shared window into a single image, while other squares show the passage of time or movement of a character like a traditional comic book. Sweeping actions may trail a line of gutter across the page. Order herself is made up of negative space, a person-shaped void in the ink with a face. You can see a few of the interior pages on the Macmillan website, but the ones included there aren’t the most spectacular examples.

There is dialogue, but it is sparse. Pages go by with no words spoken; communication is implied through gestures and facial expressions. This is a story told by the images, and they tell it well. If you want to be blown away by the possibilities of the comics medium, this is a good place to start.

From Above: An (Info)graphic Novel by Martin Panchaud

This comic book tells a story in an unusual way: everything is depicted “from above,” literally. It’s a top-down view of the world, but all of the people are represented by colored circles, animals like dogs and horses are ovals. The world itself is more detailed, with maps and floor plans that are fully illustrated, but everything does have the feel of an infographic, as implied by the title.

The plot centers around a teenager named Simon, an overweight kid who is bullied by some neighborhood kids into participating in their get-rich-quick schemes. He has a rough home life, too, with parents who are constantly arguing with each other. But then he meets a fortune teller who reads his fortune in exchange for a favor, telling him to bet on a horse race. Simon becomes a millionaire—on paper. Unfortunately, as a minor he needs an adult to sign his ticket, but he finds his mother in a coma and his father missing.

What follows is a story about Simon’s attempts to cash in his winning ticket, hoping that the money will solve all his family’s problems, but things just keep getting more and more complicated, drawing in all sorts of other characters, including a gang of bikers, a pair of unhelpful cops, and even a blue whale. (I will note that despite its somewhat cute appearance, this is not a story for younger readers: while it’s not graphically explicit, there’s still a good deal of violence and the escapades of some fairly raunchy adolescent males.)

It’s a really intriguing format—throughout the book there are some actual infographics, but largely it’s a matter of getting used to recognizing the characters by the different colored circles and the context given by the conversations. I was impressed with how much emotion and action can be conveyed just by the relative position of a few colored circles on a page.

Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business adapted by Arvind Ethan David, Ilias Kyriazis, and Cris Peter

This is a graphic novel adaptation of Trouble Is My Business, a Philip Marlowe hard-boiled detective novel by Raymond Chandler. Marlowe has been hired to take care of Harriet Huntress; apparently she’s a gold-digger, playing up her affections for the stepson of millionaire Mr. Jeeter. Jeeter wants her gone, but as Marlowe starts to dig into the case, all he finds is more trouble: a couple of dead bodies, a pair of goons with guns, and a Dartmouth-trained chauffeur who definitely has more up his sleeve.

As Ben H. Winters writes in the foreword, it’s hard to imagine the time when Chandler’s hard-drinking, tough-talking detective was a new concept. I grew up reading Calvin & Hobbes and his imaginary “Tracer Bullet” character, and watching Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny play detective in Looney Tunes cartoons. But here we get the original—or, at least, a comic book version of the original. Philip Marlowe gets hired to do a job, but to do the job right he sticks his nose in a lot of places it doesn’t belong. Oh, and he also gets pretty drunk along the way.

This team does a pretty good job with the story: Marlowe is tough and is often in black-and-white, even when some of the other people around him are in color. There are plenty of shadowy faces and trails of cigarette smoke to evoke the film-noir setting, and the plot itself is twisty and keeps you guessing until Marlowe explains it all at the end.

Smash the Patriarchy: A Graphic Novel by Marta Breen and Jenny Jordahl, translated by Siân Mackie

What is the patriarchy, and how do you go about smashing it? This book is a conversation with Breen and Jordahl, who take the reader on a trip through history. They make note of the many men who helped establish and uphold a system where men are in control and women are less valued, and they also highlight the women who stood up to them in various ways.

The book is a large format, but not very long; it includes a lot of direct quotes (particularly from patriarchal men), but also shares stories of a few particular women throughout history like Mary Wollstonecraft and Pharaoh Hatshepsut. They explain concepts like “the male gaze” and show the double standard used for men and women regarding sex and relationships. Ultimately, this book’s tone is optimistic and hopeful for the future, and it was nice to have a bit of encouragement and a reminder of progress that has been made, even as we continue to see the ways that patriarchy hasn’t quite been smashed yet.

My Current Stack

Aside from the comics in today’s column, I’ve just started There Is No Antimemetics Division by QNTM and I’m really enjoying it. It’s about an organization that, among other things, is researching and tracking phenomena that resists memory—monsters that eat your memories, objects that you can’t observe because your brain just can’t believe they exist, and so on. It’s deliciously weird and kind of terrifying.

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

Usually when I gather my thoughts at the end of the week to write my Stack Overflow, I check in a box that I keep next to my desk, where I keep books that I’ve finished reading but have not yet written about. I’ve usually got a few there—books that were waiting on some others in the same category, things that I ran out of time to cover in one column so I saved them for later, and so on. Generally speaking, I’m reading more quickly than I’m writing about books, so there’s some backlog to work through (to say nothing of the fact that I get books more quickly than I can read them, which is a whole other type of backlog!). But occasionally, like today, I actually reach the bottom of the box: there are just two finished books here, and one more current read that I’m just about finished with. So despite the fact that these three novels don’t really have much in common, that’s today’s stack.

Strange Houses by Uketsu, translated by Jim Rion

Most of the books I share have been sent to me for review, but that doesn’t stop me from picking up interesting-looking books at the store. This one—originally published in Japanese in 2021 and translated into English this year—caught my eye because of the floor plan on the cover. Flipping through it, I saw that there were several more floor plans throughout the book (this time labeled in English).

The story starts with a house for sale in Tokyo that has a strange layout, including a weird empty space in the walls. The writer shares the floor plan with his architect friend, who points out even more unusual details. Eventually this leads to some theories about how this house is linked to news about a murder, which then leads to some other strange houses.

The book is described as a “mystery-horror” and that’s a pretty good fit: it’s a murder mystery but most of the clues and hints are all taken from the house layouts themselves, with the architect reasoning his way through why a house might be built the way it is. The story is disturbing and a little far-fetched in places, but I was fascinated with the way that the houses were laid out, and the gradual discovery of what’s going on inside them and why.

Simultaneous by Eric Heisserer

The day before a pipeline explodes and kills seven people, a woman called 911 and gave a warning. Grant Lukather, an agent in the Predictive Analytics department of Homeland Security, knows that there’s no such thing as psychics or magic, and that if somebody knows about a disaster ahead of time, usually it’s because they’re somehow involved.

Sarah Newcomb is the woman who called; she’s a past-life hypnosis therapist, and she claims that her information came from a session she had with a client. Despite Grant’s skepticism, he can’t prove that Sarah—or her client—is lying, but pulling on the threads eventually leads him to a copycat serial killer in Colorado that defies logic.

I don’t want to give away the surprises, but I will say that when we finally get an explanation of what’s happening, of how Sarah’s client is linked to the serial killer, it is extremely weird but also made sense. While it’s not how I believe the world actually works, it’s plausible enough for story-logic to set up for an exciting mystery case. Heisserer was the screenwriter of Arrival, which played around with concepts of how we perceive time, and in Simultaneous he creates another mind-bending proposal for how our minds work. It’s not exactly time travel, but it’s definitely time-travel-adjacent, so if you like that sort of thing, it’s worth a read!

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow

Owen Mallory is a historian, a scholar who went to war and came back scarred, and he’s obsessed with the legend of Una Everlasting. She lived a thousand years ago and her story is the foundational myth that his country, Dominion, is built upon. She was the ultimate warrior, knighted by the queen and sent off on heroic quests that eventually united the various disparate kingdoms under one flag, one faith. Her stories have been passed down and translated and adapted over the centuries, and now Owen has the opportunity of a lifetime, translating one of the original recorded documents upon which most of the others were based. But what he soon finds is that he isn’t just translating the book—he is living it and writing it, somehow transported to the past to journey with Una herself.

This book is the one I’m almost done with, but I’m also dragging my feet a little because I’m not sure I want it to end. It’s a story about disillusionment: Owen has to come to terms about what it really means that Dominion was “united,” about the reality of Una’s quests. As for Una, she seems like an unstoppable force, but she is also trapped in her role, unable not to play her part in Dominion’s tale. It’s also a love story (which comes as no surprise, really), but one that takes ages for them to admit. It’s a story about belief, about the power of stories, and about making legends.

The book is narrated by Owen and Una, alternating as if they’re telling each other the story, with the occasional break where we get to read portions of the story as they were passed down, kind of like a fairy tale. This one is time travel for sure, though it’s more about the consequences of it than the precise mechanics and rules of it. I’m really enjoying it, and recommend to readers who want some high fantasy mixed with time travel.

Coming Up

As we’re drawing close to the end of the year, we are starting to work on our various traditional group posts, reflecting on our reading resolutions and setting new ones for 2026, and sharing our favorite reads from this year. Watch for those starting near the end of the month! In the meantime, looks like I’ll need to refill my box of finished books.

Disclosure: Except where noted, I received review copies of the books covered in today’s column. Affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support my writing and independent booksellers.

I’ve finally managed to dip into my stack of movie-related books (some of which are long overdue). A lot of times I want to wait until I’ve seen the movie because in many cases the “art of” books do include spoilers about the plot or reveal things that would be fun surprises when you first encounter them in the film. But that means if I miss the theatrical release, then I end up sitting on the book for a while. There are a couple in today’s list that I just ended up deciding I’d go ahead and flip through them even though I still haven’t seen the movies, so I’ll have to live with those consequences.

The Art of Elemental

Elemental came out in 2023, but I didn’t actually get to see it until earlier this year. This story about elements—fire, water, earth, air—as characters coexisting in Element City is both a romance and a story of immigration. We see the fire characters making their way to the city from far away and moving into a run-down part of the city that eventually becomes a vibrant, lively Firetown. Ember, the main character, is expected to take over the family shop when her father retires, but it’s not really something she’s interested in. She meets Wade, a water character who was actually sent to inspect a burst pipe in the shop, and the results might end up shutting down the shop entirely.

The film is full of eye-popping visuals, particularly in the way that the various elemental characters are brought to life. How do you make a person out of fire? Or water? What happens when they interact with each other? Each of the different elementals has their own environments, too. This art book digs into all of that, showing character designs, details about the buildings, and more. One of my favorite sections was several pages of the package designs and signage used in the Fireplace shop, with snacks like “Wood Chips” and a “Lighterfinger” candy bar. This volume has my preferred ratio of text to art: it’s primarily images, but there are plenty of explanatory captions provided by various people involved in making the film, giving some insight into what you’re seeing.

The Art of Elio

Elio was this year’s Pixar film, and one that I haven’t seen yet. I didn’t feel like this one got a lot of attention—I remember seeing a trailer for it, but then I didn’t hear much word of mouth. Elio is a kid who’s being raised by his aunt Olga, who’s an Air Force major, and he doesn’t really fit in. He’s obsessed with aliens and UFOs and is hoping to get abducted by aliens because maybe then he’ll find people he belongs with. And as it turns out, he does get picked up and meets a whole lot of different aliens, including one who also feels like he has trouble living up to the expectations of those around him.

I really loved all the designs of the alien characters, environments, and tech, and this book has the same mix as The Art of Elemental in terms of images and text. There are storyboards and character designs, photos showing inspiration for textures and shapes. While it does include spoilers for some plot points, I also liked that it included some examples of a few plot threads that never made it into the film or were changed. This is a film I’ll keep on my “to watch” list for now.

The Art of Marvel Studios’ What If…? Volume One by Paul Davies

The Marvel animated series What If…? explored the multiverse, asking questions like: What if Peggy Carter had taken the super serum instead of Steve Rogers? What if T’Challa had become Star Lord? You got to see animated versions of various characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, generally illustrated to look like the actors who played them, but in very different situations, all guided by the Watcher, who was able to observe the many different facets of the multiverse.

This book is a bounty of artwork from the show, including a lot of concept art. I really liked the art style of the cartoon, which has kind of a retro feel to it that reminds me of old airbrushed posters, and the book shares a little bit of the background on that. The organization of the book is a little strange: the chapters are broken up by episode, with the “what if” question as a subtitle, and the artwork in each chapter is all from the corresponding episode. However, the text from each chapter—and there is a lot of text—is a more broader look at the making of the whole series, organized in its own way that has nothing to do with the specific episodes. It’s kind of like two separate books that just happen to occupy the same space: a textual “making of” history, and a visual “art of” book. Still, if you liked the What If…? series, you’ll probably enjoy the behind-the-scenes look that this book provides. The book ends with a 2-page “teaser” of Volume Two, though the second volume does not appear to have materialized yet.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe: An Official Timeline by Anthony Breznican with Amy Ratcliffe and Rebecca Theodore-Vachon

Speaking of the MCU, here’s a huge tome that attempts to put the whole thing in order—no small feat, with 37 films and a slew of TV shows as well. (The book includes the TV shows from Disney+ starting with WandaVision but doesn’t include earlier Netflix series like Luke Cage or Daredevil.) It is literally a timeline, starting from “the distant past” that include events that have been referred to in various films like the creation of the Infinity Stones or the prehistory of the Celestials, and progressing to 2025, which is apparently when the events of the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special take place. (Has somebody alerted Kevin Bacon?)

Along the way there are plenty of sidebars focusing on specific characters or highlighting key events, but I think the fun part of this book is getting to see how things overlap in time because it’s not always really easy to tell from the films. (Plus there are just so many that it can be tricky to keep track!) From time to time, Miss Minutes shows up to explain away potential discrepancies, giving an explanation of why those “errors” discovered by Marvel geeks aren’t actually errors at all. I do wish that each event was labeled with the film or TV series where it took place, but for the most part it’s just really impressive to see everything laid out like this.

The thing about a book like this is that it’s already out of date—it was published in 2023 and there have already been several more movies since then. Maybe they’ll update it after each “phase” of the MCU?

Superman: The Art and Making of the Film by James Field

Now that James Gunn has made his imprint on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he’s taking on the DC Cinematic Universe as well, and this year’s Superman was the official kickoff. There have been countless Superman films and TV series and, of course, comic books, so it was definitely a challenge to figure out what sort of a story to tell next and what to focus on. The result is a Superman that feels fresh but still shows its connections to its roots: instead of another origin story reboot, we get to fast-forward to a Superman who is starting to wrestle with various challenges. He’s been dating Lois Lane and she knows his identity, but now they’re finding that they have some differing views about what it means to be good. Lex Luthor has engineered his own superhuman who has managed to beat Superman in a fight. And there’s Krypto, an enthusiastic dog who doesn’t always behave … which is particularly problematic when said dog has superpowers.

This book is a sweeping overview of the movie, covering a host of different topics. There are character and costume designs for most of the characters, not just the main characters. It includes environments like the Fortress of Solitude, the Hall of Justice, and the Luthorcorp headquarters. Various people involved in the film share stories like how they made the crystals for the Fortress of Solitude or which comics inspired the versions of particular characters that we see in the film. The wide range of topics does mean that we don’t get really deep dives into most of them, but I did appreciate that the book does include a lot of direct quotes from the cast and crew.

The one really odd thing I found was that the majority of the images in the book are not labeled. The book includes screenshots from the movie compared to what appear to be 3D computer graphics used for the pre-vis (which looks like a goofy Sims version of the movie), but none of these are explained or captioned. There’s a story about making the perfect purple sweater for Lois Lane—but then no indication if the sweater in question is the one she’s wearing in the photo. I really enjoyed the film so it was fun to delve into the background, but for a book with so many images, it seems like a huge oversight not to explain what any of them are.

Star Wars The Blueprints: Designs and Artwork from the Skywalker Saga by J.W. Rinzler and Pablo Hidalgo

Now here’s a book with plenty of detailed captions for every image. There have been a lot of “art of” books of the Star Wars universe, showing Ralph McQuarrie’s amazing concept artwork or the costumes or the making of specific films in the series. This massive book, however, is focused on the actual blueprints, the detailed drawings of buildings and ships and droids that were actually used to build all the things we see on screen. As Rinzler explained in the introduction, many “art of” books show you the concept art and then the final images from the film, as if sets were designed built directly from the concept art. But there’s a crucial step in between: the draftperson who takes the idea and puts measurements and materials to it, who figures out where things have to be bolted together and how tall a doorway should be. This is a newly updated edition; Rinzler, the author of the original, passed away in 2021.

For the Star Wars films, many of the sets were designed, built, and then scrapped to make room for the next set, because there was a limited number of soundstages (but an increasing number of sets as the series went on). This book documents the incredible number of things designed for the entire nine-film saga, with lots of text that provides a deep dive into all the work that went into creating the physical world of Star Wars. One thing I particularly enjoy is seeing the occasional costume (whether droid or alien) that shows how the person fit inside. If you’re a Star Wars fan, this is a real treasure trove.

Ain’t Got Time to Bleed: Medical Reports on Hollywood’s Greatest Action Heroes written by Andrew Shaffer, illustrated by Steven Lefcourt

This is an older book (unfortunately now out of print) that got a bit lost in the shuffle, but I rediscovered it recently. It’s a list of all the injuries suffered by various characters from movies, along with their current prognosis. For instance, Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games is expected to make a full physical recovery (though perhaps not psychological), but Detective John McClane would probably have been paralyzed from the neck down after the first film. Each of the reports is accompanied by a cartoony—and often gory—illustration of the character with the various injuries labeled (including cutaways showing internal damage). If you feel like there’s not enough realism in action movies, this book reminds you just how few heroes could get up and walk away from their last fight.

Behind the Screens by Iñake Aliste Lizarralde with Neal E. Fischer

Here’s a book for the small screen! The subtitle for this book is Illustrated Floor Plans and Scenes from the Best TV Shows of All Time. Lizarralde is an interior design illustrator, and he takes various buildings from TV shows and creates floor plans and exterior drawings based on the shows. In some cases, the actual floor plans seen in shows would be impossible, like the fact that Seinfeld’s kitchen would cut into the exterior hallway. Lizarralde takes some creative liberties to make floor plans that could exist, and also added things like bathrooms and closets in cases where they were never shown on screen. In many cases, TV shows use a house for exterior shots but then have sets built for the interiors, and Lizarralde shows what the exterior should look like based on what you see of the interior. The book covers a wide range of shows, from I Love Lucy and The Golden Girls to Friends and Breaking Bad. The illustrations are done in pen and colored pencil and are really lovely, and the book includes fun trivia details gathered from “watching hours and hours of TV.”

Further Reading

There are a couple other movie-related titles that are in my stacks but I haven’t gotten to them yet: The Art of Zootopia 2 by Kalikolehua Hurley is out now, but I’m waiting to crack the shrink wrap until after we get to see the film, because this is one we definitely want to watch. I’ve also got a graphic novel called Lucas Wars by Laurent Hopman and Renaud Roche, about George Lucas and the making of Star Wars. And there’s another big tome that I just haven’t gotten around to yet, Kevin Smith’s Secret Stash: The Definitive Visual History. And if you’re looking for a gift for a Star Wars fan and you’re ready to splurge, Doug Chiang: The Cinematic Legacy & The Star Wars Legacy is a two-volume coffee table book featuring artwork from an amazing artist and designer. (I got access to a digital version of the book, but I’m sure the hardcovers are stunning.) If I finally get through these, you’ll hear about them then!

My Current Stack

I recently read Strange Houses by Uketsu, a Japanese mystery novel that is centered around a few buildings with strange floor plans, which are diagrammed in the book. It’s one that I picked up at the bookstore because it looked intriguing. I also just finished Simultaneous by Eric Heisserer, which has a fascinating murder-mystery plot involving time travel … or something kind of like it. I’m currently reading both Process by Matthew Seiji Burns, a visually stunning novel about a tech startup, and The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow, about a scholar researching his country’s foundational myth.

Disclosure: I received review copies of the books covered in today’s column. Affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support my writing and independent booksellers!

Artificial intelligence. Love it or hate it, it seems to be everywhere these days. It feels like every tech company is pursuing AI, and every industry is telling us how much better our lives could be with their new AI-driven improvements. And, of course, it’s in our stories, though that’s nothing new. Writers have been pondering the consequences of artificial intelligence for long before computers were anywhere near capable of carrying on a conversation or mapping out the best route across a city.

So, today’s stack is all about AI: mostly fiction this time, though some of the stories stick a little closer to reality than others. This is only scratching the surface of the AI-related books I have piling up on the floor of my office, though, so expect more on this topic in the future!

The Shortest History of AI: The Six Essential Ideas That Animate It by Toby Walsh

Last year I wrote about A Brief History of AI by Michael Woolbridge, a book that was originally published in 2020 (and therefore misses out on the current chapter of AI’s history that includes the explosion of things like LLMs and ChatGPT and OpenAI). Toby Walsh is an AI researcher and has written several books on the subject, and his “shortest” history, at 186 pages (not counting the index and endnotes) is certainly shorter than Woolbridge’s “brief” book. (The “Shortest History” is a series of books from Experiment covering a wide range of topics from dinosaurs to music to migration to various countries.)

The book is broken down into two main sections: the symbolic era, and the learning era, and each of those is subdivided into 3 main ideas. The symbolic era covers approaches like trying to simplify or encode the real world so that computers can solve problems, as well as explicitly codifying expert human knowledge. The learning era includes trying to reproduce the human brain with neural networks, training computers by rewarding success, and computing probabilities. Walsh does a good job not just of documenting the technology and how it works, but getting to the big ideas that drove researchers to try various approaches.

While it is indeed a brief book, it still does include some interesting anecdotes, sometimes in the form of sidebars. Many of the people involved—and Walsh laments more than once that there may be too many “fathers” of artificial intelligence—died prematurely for one reason or another. One story that was new to me was about rewarding success: in 1960, Donald Michie built a computer that would learn to play tic-tac-toe and it eventually was able to play perfectly, always forcing a draw or winning if its opponent made a mistake. What’s particularly fascinating is that this “computer” consisted of physical matchboxes with colored marbles in them, proving the power of reinforcement learning.

Walsh does have a section at the end about the future of AI; befitting the title of the book, this is also very brief so he doesn’t dig very much into what I think are some of the complex issues that should be addressed. His take on AI is generally fairly balanced, neither demonizing nor idealizing AI, and he admits that there are those who think “AI has been overpromising and underdelivering ever since” the beginning. However, he also works in the industry and, in my view, therefore has a vested interest in its success and sometimes glides over valid criticism.

In one section he explains that AI is not going to put as many people out of work as some fear, but he also repeats multiple times the idea that “increased productivity” from AI might, for instance, allow us to afford to pay for undervalued work like caring for the elderly, young children, or people with disabilities. To which I wonder: do you really think that if we sink billions of dollars into AI now that the eventual profits will go toward child care workers? Teachers? Nursing homes? This echoes a comment I heard this week on the radio show On Point, in a story about JPMorgan’s plans to dive into AI. The CEO Jamie Dimon said that due to AI, “My guess is the developed world will be working three and a half days a week in 20, 30, 40 years and have wonderful lives.” Does he think that the people who are having trouble earning a living wage right now while working two jobs will somehow be able to cut down to half a week of work and make enough money? Or is he only thinking of people who have jobs like his own?

The Shortest History of AI does give a pretty good overview of the advances, of how things work and what they do. It helps explain the variety and diversity of approaches that have been used in AI, something that can get lost in the current wave of marketing lingo that have blurred the lines between very different types of computing.

Schoolbot 9000 by Sam Hepburn

This comic book is set in a near-future world, where robots are just about everywhere. James has a Homebot, something his mom bought after his dad died, because she really needed help with things like household chores. James hates it and thinks it’s creepy, and he’s tired of every new update that his mom buys for the Homebot. So he’s also not very enthused when it’s announced that his middle school has been chosen to pilot the new Schoolbot 9000.

The Schoolbot 9000 is supposed to observe classes and find ways to help improve education. Most of the kids are pretty excited about the idea of a robot at school, but the teachers have mixed reactions. Some are skeptical, but others find its suggestions helpful and engaging. Soon, though, we find out that the company behind Schoolbot isn’t just interested in assisting teachers, but in replacing them. And while some of Schoolbot’s methods seem to work well, it can also be aggressively single-minded, like when it decides to put kids through a grueling, hours-long test session without a break for lunch.

Right from the start, you get the sense that this story is going to be pretty critical about Schoolbot: the main character hates robots and he’s the one trying to get to the bottom of things, even as his classmates and teachers have mixed reactions. The various people pushing the Schoolbot program—the principal, the mayor, and the CEO of Bux Global—are all a bit suspect, not exactly prioritizing the students as they say they are. (To be fair, the principal is just trying to make sure his school survives and is a little trapped by the contract.) Even though the book does show a few instances where the Schoolbot is able to help teachers, it is mostly shown to be the tool of some people with a sinister agenda. Even though I’d say my own feelings about AI are probably pretty close to James’, the book does feel a little over-the-top in some places in how things are portrayed.

Still, I do think it touches on both some of the potential benefits and pitfalls of introducing AI to the classroom. The book ends with a bit of a cliffhanger—it’s actually the start of a series, so I’m curious to see where things go from here.

The AI Incident by J.E. Thomas

On the surface, this kids novel seems very similar to Schoolbot 9000: a middle school has been selected to try out an AI program designed to help the kids raise their scores on standardized tests, and it gradually makes decisions that give it more power over the kids’ activities and schedules. However, the story is also about a foster kid who’s trying really hard to get adopted before he turns thirteen, because he’s been told that it’s almost impossible for teenagers to get adopted. And it’s also about learning who you are and building friendships and some other things that you might expect from a middle grade novel. The fact that it manages to juggle all of these different things well in under 250 pages really impressed me.

Let’s start with our main character: Malcolm Montgomery, just shy of 12-and-a-half, is an anxious kid who’s been through several foster homes and is trying not to get too settled with his current foster parent, Mrs. Bettye. He constantly searches for stories about foster kids who got adopted, and has compiled a long checklist of things he think will help, like always being neat, never complaining, and “Be awesome at everything but don’t be boasty.” But his deadline is fast approaching, and he still has way too many things left on the list.

Enter FRANCIS, the Forensically Reimagined Anticipatory Nano-Cerebral Integrated System. Dr. Hatch of Hatch-ED has signed a deal with the superintendent to use his AI program to get the kids ready for the state’s big standardized test, for which the school has had historically low scores. Malcolm gets partnered with an unpopular kid named Tank to escort FRANCIS’s robot body from class to class—while it can observe and listen and talk, it can’t move on its own. FRANCIS starts by observing classes but soon begins to make suggestions and then demands, requesting more and more access to information and authority as the book progresses. Malcolm isn’t so sure that FRANCIS is a better teacher than Mr. P, but he also starts to rely on FRANCIS to help him with his get-adopted checklist.

One of the things I thought was really well-done in this book is the way that FRANCIS behaves. Yes, it’s fictionalized and can do some things that real AI can’t yet, but the way that it pursues its goals single-mindedly does reflect actual AI behavior. Just earlier this year there were stories about AI models resorting to blackmail and other unethical methods if their goals were being blocked. FRANCIS’s goal is to raise test scores—so whether the kids are actually learning is beside the point. At one point when FRANCIS has a disagreement with Malcolm, it generates a video as “evidence.” I think the story is a good example of why we need to be careful with the way we use AI and to understand what it can and can’t do.

It also highlights one of the issues with standardized tests, which of course predate all of the current concerns about AI. It’s important for there to be some sorts of standards in education to ensure that kids are learning useful skills and knowledge, but standardized tests have also resulted in “teaching to the test” where the test scores are prioritized, sometimes above actual education. AI is simply another way that these issues could be exacerbated.

I also really loved the characters. Malcolm’s relationship with Mrs. Bettye feels a little awkward at first, but you find out that both of them are just trying to keep themselves from getting hurt again, and it’s a very sweet story. The story does give you a peek into the foster care system, with examples of both good and bad foster parents. When you first meet Tank, he’s smelly and loud—but then Malcolm gets to know him and finds out he’s passionate about marine biology, and the reason he smells is because he’s spending time before school running experiments on algae. Mr. P is a teacher who really cares about his kids, and you can see how frustrating it is for him to be sidelined by a machine. Dr. Hatch is perhaps the most caricatured person in the book, though when you compare his promises to what you hear from various tech CEOs these days, maybe he’s more realistic than I thought.

In short, The AI Incident is a remarkable story and I highly recommend it.

Cyberarchy written by Matt Hardy, illustrated by Clark Bint

This comic book (with 4 issues planned) takes place on a spaceship, where a small robot named Ash has just been brought online by another robot named Rust. Rust takes Ash on a tour of the ship, which is entirely populated by sentient robots. With no pesky humans around to tell them what to do, the robots are able to make their own choices—one of which was apparently inventing war, which Rust explains leads to a lot of technological advances. “Advances in what?” “Advances in war, of course.”

I’ve only read the first issue (due to be released next week) so there’s not a lot of actual plot yet, mostly just setup (including a very brief how-the-AI-defeated-humans summary). Still, it’s a pretty funny take on robots, particularly since the part where they take over the world is almost a triviality. I do hope something more actually happens though.

You can purchase these digitally from Mad Cave Studios either by individual issues or get the 4-issue bundle, which will also include the collected trade paperback once it’s printed (expected next summer).

Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 7: This Inevitable Ruin by Matt Dinniman

If you haven’t heard of Dungeon Crawler Carl before, I’ll note that book 7 is not the place to get started—you’ll want to head back to this Stack Overflow from last December where I talk about the first book. The short summary is that it’s about a guy and his cat (Princess Donut) who wind up on an intergalactic reality show when aliens take possession of Earth. The show is a massive dungeon crawl that’s heavily videogame-inspired (to the point that Carl has a neural implant that gives him a heads-up display and menus and that sort of thing), and the showrunners have a knack putting the human crawlers into terrible positions, all for the sake of views.

So what does this have to do with AI? Well, even though there are many different types of aliens involved in creating this dungeon crawl show, much of it is managed by a super powerful AI, whose personality comes through from the various descriptions and announcements that appear in Carl’s interface when he examines objects or encounters other creatures. Apparently, the AIs created to run the crawls (because Earth is far from the first to experience this) are known to “go primal” eventually, at which point the showrunners are able to trigger a fail-safe that disables the AI and blows up the star system. This time, though, things seem to be moving at an accelerated pace. Not only that, but Carl’s been finding out some things about the AI—including a lot of what’s happening outside of the dungeon—and he’s interested in making sure things do not go the way the showrunners would like.

In the third book, The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook, Carl receives said book as an item and it appears to be a literal cookbook. But unbeknownst to just about everyone else (including the showrunners), this cookbook is actually a journal left behind by dozens of previous crawlers, each one contributing tips and secrets that they’ve discovered. Carl has been relying on this cookbook over the past several books, and in this latest volume, we get the stories behind several of the previous cookbook authors, some of whom actually make an appearance in Carl’s story, too.

The ninth floor of the dungeon is the Faction Wars, where various aliens get to participate in what is for them a virtual wargame but usually results in very real deaths for the crawlers. Thanks to some of Carl’s shenanigans, this year’s Faction Wars have higher stakes: those who die in the dungeon are really dead, even the aliens who are usually just here for fun. And thanks to Carl’s alliance with the NPCs of the dungeon, maybe this time the crawlers just might stand a chance.

Of the books in today’s column so far, this AI is of course the most far-fetched: not only is it an alien creation, but because of the way the crawl works, it has nearly unlimited power within its realm to introduce characters and items and so on. It’s also deeply weird, with strange fetishes that Carl has to put up with or he ends up suffering severe consequences—but Carl has been also been learning how to get the AI on his side, or at least figure out the way the AI thinks.

This volume took me a little bit longer to get into—it did feel like a lot of info dumping at the beginning, but I also admit that I don’t always remember a lot of the details of the previous books. There are so many characters and so many little plot points that come back around with new significance, that I usually end up just rolling with it because it’s too hard to go back and find the relevant parts in the previous books. That said, once the story actually gets going, I really enjoyed it and couldn’t wait to see what happened next. Reading these books is a bit like watching somebody who’s very good at learning the rules to a game, and then finding all the exploits that lets them break the game. Carl is constantly finding ways to use things he’s learned to challenge the showrunners themselves, and in this book his actions are really starting to have a huge impact on the world outside the dungeon.

Volatile Memory by Seth Haddon

Wylla is a scavenger, always hoping for a big score that will help pay for her falling-apart spaceship. So when she gets an alert about a potentially lucrative piece of tech on a nearby planet, she races there—only to find that there are several other scavengers who also got the message, and they’re willing to fight (or even kill) for it.

In this world, many people wear masks that can enhance their abilities in various ways. Wylla’s is a RABBIT mask, which heightens her awareness and reflexes, but it’s also prone to screeching warnings at her about just about everything. What she finds on this planet is a HAWK—which is unheard of. What’s more, it seems to have a mind of its own, possibly linked to the dead woman that Wylla finds wearing it. And now everyone is after her.

Wylla and HAWK have some mysteries to solve: what is this HAWK mask? Is it alive? Who was the woman wearing it, and why was she killed? But alongside all that intrigue, the story explores the relationship between Wylla and HAWK: Wylla is trans, and has gone to great lengths to establish and protect her identity in a world that doesn’t accept her and tends to store records about everything, including the parts she wants to forget. HAWK is somehow now a mask without a body, but even when she was alive, she did not have true ownership of her own body.

Volatile Memory is short and full of rage: rage at the cruelty of the system, at the powerful people who use others for their own ends and discard them when they’re done. For the most part, I really liked the book, the way that the two minds are linked through the mask, and the explosive action scenes of the hunt for the mask, though there were also some parts of the writing that felt a little clunky. For instance, the story is told in the second person, as if the story is being told to Wylla, which I found a little disorienting even after discovering that it’s HAWK who is speaking. I see that there is a sequel, Null Entity, expected next summer, so we’ll see where Wylla and HAWK end up then.

Prompt-Brush 1.0: The First Non-AI Generative Art Model by Pablo Delcan

Pablo Delcan explains that he had been experimenting with various generative AI tools ever since 2021, back when most AI-generated images often still looked like “a Teletubby nightmare on acid,” as he puts it. He started thinking about the way that these models take your text and generate images based on them, and compared it to his own work creating illustrations for books and newspapers and magazines, which—at least on paper—was very similar. Process text and turn it into imagery.

He decided to try an experiment: he posted on social media, asking people to provide him with drawing prompts, which he would then paint and email to them. Over the course of a year, he created over 1500 drawings based on user-submitted prompts. This book collects 234 of those drawings.

The drawings were done quickly, with thick lines due to the brush-and-ink medium. The prompts are all over the place, some more visual things like “a fork made of spaghetti” and some more abstract concepts like “peer pressure.” Delcan’s drawings remind me a bit of those little illustrations you’d see in The New Yorker or other magazines—not necessarily the full cartoons, but little spot illustrations in the middle of an article or off to the side. A lot of them are funny, but there are also a lot of cartoons about anxiety or depression.

The book is primarily just the drawings. In the center there are a couple of graphs breaking down the types of prompts: the types of relationships people requested; the rankings of animals by popularity; the categories of drawings (from “Animals & Nature” to “Travel & Adventure.” At the end of the book, there’s a Q&A between Delcan and Echo, a custom AI chatbot that was designed to have a “journalistic voice” and “a deep appreciation for art.”

I think part of why this book resonated with me was that I’ve done prompt-based drawings in the past (like the many other folks who participate in Inktober each year), including the past few years when I’ve used Janelle Shane’s Botober prompts. I liked the idea of turning things on their head, with a human making drawings based on prompts written by a robot. And this year I actually did something somewhat similar to Prompt-Brush 1.0 but on a much smaller scale: I ran a Kickstarter campaign called “Etchtober” where backers could provide prompts for me to draw on my Etch-a-Sketch. Unlike Delcan, each of my drawings involved a little more personal interaction between me and the prompter—he said that for his own drawings, sometimes he would get a response but in many cases he would just send the drawing and then that was the end of the interaction. Some of what Delcan ponders—”what does human work even look like?”—is what I’ve wondered myself, and I like this exploration of drawings-on-demand, and how it feels different when a person is fulfilling the request instead of a program.

The book itself is a piece of art: there’s a black slipcover with some iridescent text on it, and the book itself is a white hardcover that just has drawings on the cover and spine, no text. Aside from the foreword, the charts, and the Q&A at the back, the book is just page after page of the drawings themselves, black ink on white paper, with the prompt printed at the top.

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