Other Hobby Stuff

I thought I would continue what I did in 2022, and start reviewing what I’m reading this year.

Recently finished:

• The Impossible Fortune, by Richard Osman: another excellent entry in the Thursday Murder Club series. Delightful, no notes.
• Death’s End, by Cixin Liu: the final book in the Three-Body Problem trilogy (properly called “Remembrance of Earth’s Past”). This series is just astonishing. Full of twists & turns, and the highest of high-concept sci-fi. I would never recommend this to anyone but a hard-core sci-fi nerd. I have no idea how the TV show could even possibly approach this series.
• Agent Provocateur, by Cassandra Spencer: another gut-punching short story (and winner in the 2025 TFR awards)

Currently reading:

• Stag Dance and Other Stories, by Torrey Peters: for some reason, I didn’t expect the emotional sucker-punches to the gut that frankly seem inevitable from Peters. I’m only halfway through Stag Dance itself, so the punch is yet unforeseen, but the first 2 short stories…woof…
• Of Shadows, Stars, and Sabers: a short story collection (Xmas present from my wife), which I will be dipping into at bed time.

Next to read (in some order):

• All the Way, by Alyson Greaves
• Bottle Blondes, by Rhiannon Swanson (a Scribblehub original I pasted into an epub)
• Tress of the Emerald Sea, by Brandon Sanderson (borrowed from my sister)
• Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower, by Tamsyn Muir (soon to be acquired from the library)
• Everyone on the Moon Is Essential Personnel, by Julian K. Jerboe (soon to be acquired from the library)
• Estro Junkies, by Talia Bhatt & Beth Leigh-Ann (to be purchased with a forthcoming paycheck)

• Stag Dance was intense & devastating. Seems to be par for the course with Torrey Peters.
• All The Way, by Alyson Greaves: this consumed the greater part of my week. I slept late. I nearly missed the bus to work once. My only complaint is that I have to wait until 2028(?) to get the conclusion of this series!!!! I 100% did not expect to care about “trans teenage cheerleader in 2004” as a concept. But this is the best thing I’ve read this year so far.
• These Rainy Autumn Nights, by Erin Elkin: a short story I can best sum up as “eldritch force-femme time-loop”. It’s told anachronically, but starts with Day 220,000-odd. 0.o Utterly wild. Intense. Loved it.
• Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower, by Tamsyn Muir: the story consistently maintains a cute fairy-tale register, all the while the princess learns how to do things like skin giant rats. Just what I expected from the Locked Tomb author.

I read Bottle Blondes by Rhiannon Swanson. It’s a Scribblehub original, but as soon as she publishes it (per her author’s note), I’m gonna pay actual money for this. It’s an eggfic romance, so on one level it’s entirely predictable. But the emotional journeys I went on through this book! Very much recommend.

Then I started reading Martha Wells’ first novel, City of Bone. Complex worldbuilding as per usual, ancient artefacts as per usual. Khat feels a bit like a prototype for Moon of the Raksura novels, but this book definitely has it’s own character and I’m enjoying it so far.

• Finished City of Bones. Honestly a stellar first novel. Worldbuilding, ancient artefacts, fun characters. Definitely recommend to any fans of Martha Wells.
• Read a bit of Das Kapital. The first 3% of the ebook is various forewords & afterwords to different translations & editions. The last of which detailed a feud between Marx & some anonymous column-writer about what Gladstone said in an inaugural address. The text of the actual book I’ve read so far is him laying out the concept of abstracting labour & value with excruciating patience–interesting, but definitely slow to a bourgeoise intellectual of the 21st century. I’m gonna get back to this one when I have a long uninterrupted stretch.
• Read Tress of the Emerald Sea, by Brandon Sanderson, on loan from my sister. It’s quite good. Unfortunately, I might have to read more Sanderson, after having avoided him on purpose for a decade lol.

Now I need to figure out what I wanna read next. I’m gonna alternate ebook & physical book–ideally to force my way through my bedside stack. Currently torn between Spook Street (Slough House book 4), The Brute of Greengrave (a collection I bought over a year ago), and maybe a roulette spin I dunno.

I absolutely devoured the next 2 Slough House novels (Spook Street & London Rules). (By Mick Herron.) That’s me caught up to the show as released so far. These books are just so readable. I probably(?) won’t read ahead; the next season (presumably adapting Joe Country) should be out later this year; but I can’t promise (myself) anything in this regard lol.

I’m currently reading Katabasis, by R. F. Kuang. It is excellent so far. Like Babel, it’s (a) centred around a prestigious English university campus, and (b) plays heavily with words & scholarship. It is far less focused on British Imperialism, rather choosing to target academia.

My “Up Next” consists of the following (to be read, hopefully, in this order):

1. The Brute of Greengrave (Jemma Topaz)
2. Here for the Wrong Reasons (Lydia Wang & Annabel Paulsen)–this one snuck in because my library hold came in
3. Queen Demon (Martha Wells)
4. Elantris (Brandon Sanderson)
5. Battle Ground (Jim Butcher)–this is (I think?) the final Dresden Files novel, and it’s been on my stack since my mum got it for me like a couple of years ago. I’ve definitely lost momentum with the series, but if this is the end I wanna get it wrapped up.

I might also read Sword Art Online, having recently seen stuff about it on Tumblr. A friend has the complete deluxe light novels, which I spotted while I was moving him into his new flat last weekend.

Also, if you’re on StoryGraph, I’m @gay_dragon_princess42.

• I finished Katabasis on Monday(?). Excellent ending. The catharsis? Unparalleled. Not too much, not too little, just exactly the right amount all the narration & backstory & character development warrant.
• I started The Brute of Greengrave. The prologue story was intriguing. But the second one had entirely more werewolf bondage erotica than I was in the mood for, so that one’s going back on the shelf until I am.
• I read Here for the Wrong Reasons, by Lydia Wang & Annabel Paulsen. It’s a romance about 2 lesbians (one closeted, one unaware) going on a The Bachelor clone. One’s in it for the clout, the other for the husband she still thinks she wants, and (would you believe it) they fall in love.
  The adherence to the show format in the beginning made it feel a bit rough/slow, but once girls started getting eliminated & there were fewer characters to dwell on, it picked up pace fast!
• I just started Queen Demon, sequel to Witch King, by Martha Wells. I’d forgotten just how dense the world-building in the first one was, and almost wish I’d reread Witch King in preparation. But despite how fast Wells throws details, she never leaves you without the information you need at any given moment.
• Oh, I also read through Playing with Pyramids, the 2002 rulebook of Looney Pyramid games I got in the mail with my new pyramids & accoutrements. (It didn’t take me very long, cos it’s only 128 pages, and I already know half the games contained therein. But it’s still a fascinating glance into a slice of pyramid history.)

Current book count: 13

• Finished Queen Demon. Not as grabby as the first one, and it’s clearly leading up to a third. But hey, it’s Martha Wells, so her average is better than many authors’ peaks.
• Read Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson. Dammit, he’s good! Perfectly hinted twists & reveals. Such an economy of plot detail. Sure, the prose was rough (it was his debut after all), but the bones are SO GOOD!
  So much so that once I finish my current book, I’m gonna do Mistborn March. See how much of that series I can get through.
• Blew through Murder by Memory (Olivia Waite) mostly on my way home from work. This murder mystery novella mixes fascinating sci-fi with 1920s elegance, and I heartily recommend it.
• Currently reading: Dream On, Ramona Riley, by Ashley Herring Blake. I read her Make the Season Bright, which was excellent. This one is also technically “small town, exes collide”, but in a wildly different way. She’s good at quickly making a romance be much more than its premise.

Current book count: 16

Aside from listening to the Murderbot Diaries full-cast audiobooks again, this month I attempted “Mistborn March”:

• Once again, Brandon Sanderson is frustratingly good. If you’ve never read Mistborn (Era One: The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, & The Hero of Ages), it does fascinating things with the Chosen One, prophecies, a detailed magic system that the protagonists keep learning more about… It’s not game-changing like Le Guin, but it’s a top-tier example of Standard Fantasy.
• There’s an excellent twist that gets foreshadowed way back in book 1, chapter ½? It’s a little thing, and pieces keep getting piled on regularly, until sometime in book 3 you piece it together, a few chapters before the relevant protagonist does. I actually had to stop reading when I saw it coming. Good stuff.
• I’ve also started reading the sequel to Adrian Tchaikovsky’s The Children of Time, The Children of Ruin. The first book involves uplifted spiders & Old Earth humans meeting. This one involves those two meeting uplifted octopuses. He certainly knows how to pick animals with interesting psychologies, and he knows how to weave fascinating stories around them. Children of Time is probably one of my favourite new SF novels, and Children of Ruin is shaping up to be an admirable follow-up.
• I have had a taste of a wee indie transfem short story collection, but I don’t know if I’ll keep on with it–it’s a bit amateurish.

• I finished Children of Ruin, and read the 3rd book Children of Memory. It’s definitely different to the first two, but wow! It’s like a Star Trek episode in the best way.
• I started Queen of Faces, a YA trans-coded period fantasy, but I don’t know if I’ll finish it. It seems just a bit too YA for me, if you know what I mean.
• So I picked up my other library book, One Of The Boys, by Victoria Zeller on the recommendation of @thetransfemininereview. It is excellent as promised. All the trans feels, and a teen story that doesn’t feel juvenile.

My read count is now 25, so I’m slightly over the goal in my head.

A quarter of the way through the year already! And this has been a big week for reading, apparently… I’m low-key doing a trans readathon.

• One of the Boys was excellent
• Home Ice, a straight trans romance involving hockey (cos that’s popular, I guess?) It was very sweet, and included the main couple adopting a trans teen. I deducted ¾ of a star for just how often the narration mentioned Brant’s hard erection.
• Walking Practice (by Dolki Min): described to me as “Left Hand of Darkness” meets “Squid Game”, it’s a fascinating look at gender through the eyes of a human-eating shapeshifting alien. Equal parts endearing & uncomfortable.
• Fake It (by Lily Seabrooke, who co-authored another transbian romance I loved) is about the owner of a failing restaurant falling for the host of a “save the failing restaurant of the week” TV show. But also so much more than that description gives it credit for.
• I also snuck in 2 short stories by J. G. Ballard: Report on an Unidentified Space Station (excellent mindfuckery in just a few pages) and Thirteen to Centaurus (a fascinating commentary on generation ships).

That brings my count up to 28, and I’m now tackling E. R. Eddison’s weighty classic fantasy, The Worm Ourobouros, which first captured my imagination in The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy. I’ve had a beat-up copy of the Ballantine reprint (leading up to their Adult Fantasy series), which reminded me of it. (I have basically never seen it referenced anywhere.) Seeing that Ursula K. LeGuin gave the prose high praise, I have now read more of it than “prologue + 0.25 chapters) that I did the last time.

The bulk of my reading this week was The Worm Ourobouros, by E. R. Eddison.

• Written in 1922, it’s a pseudo-Jacobean medieval romance slash Norse saga, allegedly set on Mercury. It was an inspiration to Tolkien & Lewis, and LeGuin praised the prose.
• There is a framing device in which an Englishman is taken via his dreams to Mercury by a heraldric bird, who introduces him to Lord Juss of Demonland (whose presence chamber is described in vivid, vivid detail), and largely he gets forgotten about. He pops back up at the start of chapter 2, so the bird can inform us that we’ve time-skipped to the wrastling (sic) match between Lord Brandoch Daha of Demonland and King Gorice XI of Witchland. After that point, the narration mentions him in passing just once.
• The prose is NOT for the faint-hearted. But if you can get through chapter 1, you’ll be fine. A delightful sample, wherein our heroes are climbing a mountain range in search of the greatest mountain in the world, Koshtra Privarcha:
  Framed in the crags of the hillsides, canopied by blue heaven, Koshtra Pivrarcha stood before them. So huge he was that even here at six miles’ distance the eye might not at a glance behold him, but must sweep back and forth as over a broad landscape from the ponderous roots of the mountain where they sprang black and sheer from the glacier, up the vast face, where buttress was piled upon buttress and tower upon tower in a blinding radiance of ice-hung precipice and snow-filled gully, to the lone heights where like spears menacing high heaven the white teeth of the summit-ridge cleft the sky. From right to left he filled nigh a quarter of the heavens, from the graceful peak of Ailinon looking over his western shoulder, to where on the east the snowy slopes of Jalchi shut in the prospect, hiding Koshtra Belorn.
• (Now, that’s a mountain!)
• (They need to climb Koshtra Belorn, where Lord Juss’ brother is imprisoned. But “none shall set foot on that holy peak that has not gazed down upon it”, which can only be done from the even taller Koshtra Privarcha. Also, it turns out that his brother is on a secret third mountain, not called Koshtra anything but rather Zora Rach nam Psarrion.)
• (This book holds a great wealth of names for a D&D campaign.)

Following this, I read the brief The Gods of Pegāna by Lord Dunsany. It’s a series of vignettes in which he invents a pantheon & mythology for fun. Again, inspirational to Tolkien & all fantasy writers to come, and also something I’m totally gonna mine for a D&D campaign.

I tried reading another foundational piece of fantasy (Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique), but am a bit worn out by archaic prose. So instead I’m rereading a teenage favourite, Mister Monday, first of the “Keys to the Kingdom” series by Garth Nix.

In my tags last week, I wasn’t sure if I was gonna read more of The Keys to the Kingdom, or maybe intersperse them… Lol. I read all of them, and another book besides.

The Keys to the Kingdom series, by Garth Nix (consisting of Mister Monday, Grim Tuesday, Drowned Wednesday, Sir Thursday, Lady Friday, Superior Saturday, & Lord Sunday) is a fascinating YA fantasy series. It is about an asthmatic teen from Earth who is selected as the Heir of the Architect by a corrupt Trustee (Mister Monday), who’s doing it as a loophole. But Arthur gets drawn into the House, Epicentre of the Universe, which contains sorcery, raw Nothing, treachery, a fascinating Victorian-ish aesthetic, aliens, legendary characters such as the Pied Piper and the Ancient Mariner (from the Rime thereof)–and it’s really just a rollicking ride. I loved it as a teen, and honestly it still holds up.

After that, I read Magic Kingdom For Sale! Sold!, by Terry Brooks (the guy who wrote the shameless LOTR ripoff Sword of Shannara that somehow got over 30 sequels). It’s about a Chicago lawyer who answers a catalogue ad for a magic kingdom. It goes about how you’d expect, while also taking itself surprisingly seriously given that there’s a guy with a dog’s head & glasses on the cover.

No idea exactly what I’m gonna read next, tbh–will it be one of the Ballantyne Adult Fantasy books, a comfy reread of a trans romance, something weird? Who’s to say?

April seems to be my Month of Rereads. I’m gonna blame being tired & fatigued just generally. After my Keys to the Kingdom binge last week:

• I reread Show Girl by Alyson Greaves, cracking open my paperback copy for the first time. Apart from loving her work generally, I love how this book (a) gets the premise up & running by Page 10, and (b) manages to dive deep through the silly forcefemme premise crust into the messy emotional heart of transition. (Which is basically Greaves’ oeuvre at this point.)
• Not a reread, I followed up The Worm Ourobouros with a Ballantine Adult Fantasy compilation by Lin Carter. It was tedious & stuffed full of racism. But it did have beautiful poems from C. S. Lewis & J. R. R. Tolkien, so kind of worth it.
• I got a hankering for Terry Pratchett, which was not sated by watching The Hogfather tv movie. So I’m reading the Susan trilogy: Soul Music & Hogfather done, and I’m on Thief of Time.
• Also (having managed to get back into running, after 2 solid weeks of not being up for it), I started listening to an audiobook of The Hobbit. (Which, for some reason, has its chapters broken into mp3 files of roughly 3 minutes apiece.)

As per usual, I’ve got no idea what I’m reading after that. My To-Read Pile continues to grow apace. All I’m definite on is Mistborn May (or else my friend Sarah might poke me with a stick).

• As expected, I finished Thief of Time. All in all, I think I have to rate Hogfather the highest out of the Susan books: it has the UU wizards, whom I adore (though Lu Tze is pretty good). But what it doesn’t have is the random, vague implication on the final page that Susan hooks up with the male protagonist. I just feel that those moments in Soul Music & Thief of Time feel out of place. Unnecessary.
  (Maybe it’s just because I’m a lesbian. Sue me.)
• When I finished that, I read a novella I spent ages trying to get ahold of: Mackenzie Rice’s Slime Time. It’s a fascinating, kink-centric trans/queer cyberpunk piece that gave me a similar feel to Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. If you read it, DO read the content warnings first: it’s not for the faint-of-heart.
• Joe Country, the 6th Slough House book from Mick Herron, is a solid entry into the series. Nothing exciting, but I’m looking forward to seeing it on TV, since Hugo Weaving’s character is coming back.
• Then an Adrian Tchaikovsky novellette, Elder Race. It starts with a princess going to the sorcerer’s tower, to call upon his promise to her great-grandmother to come to the kingdom’s aid. Said sorcerer is actually a survey anthropologist from Earth, hanging out in suspended animation for a call from home. The resulting tensions & mistranslations between genres is AMAZING. Especially the middle chapter, which involves the scientist explaining the waves of colonisation from Earth, lined up paragraph-by-paragraph with how she hears it (full of fantastical metaphor). Can’t wait for the sequel!
• I’m currently in the middle of Iain M. Banks’ Look to Windward, a nominal sequel to his first Culture novel Consider Phlebas. It’s the 5th Culture novel I’ve read, and I think I’d rank it a solid 4th place so far–so it’s in the large gap between Matter (which my high-school Physics teacher loaned me with minimal context) and one of my lowest-rated reads ever Use of Weapons (a book I was disliking so much that I put it down & read the entirety of The Wheel of Time series, a series I have SO many problems with but would still rate over Use of Weapons).

Read count: 46

(My book- and page-count, per Storygraph, has gotten higher every month this year. 0.o)

Despite having the week off, I didn’t read overly much. I was busy doing various other things I can’t do otherwise. But:

• I finished Look to Windward. I think it’s a perfectly average installment in the Culture series. If you want to try some sci-fi that’s like Star Trek’s Federation TO THE MAXX, start with Excession or The Player of Games (which I really ought to reread at some point).
• I followed that up with Witches Loving Werewolves, a novella collection by Ela Bambust. Cute romantasy eggfic fluff.
• Since I found them at the mall’s Take A Book, Leave A Book shelf, I’ve been meaning to reread some of Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series. I read Dragonflight this week. I’d forgotten just how quickly they figure out the time travel stuff, I could’ve sworn it was book 2…
• I read a few of those “classic short stories” from the poll that went around: I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream (Ray Bradbury), The Lottery (Shirley Jackson) & The Masque of the Red Death (Edgar Allen Poe). I’ve got some more open in tabs still.
• Finally, by popular demand (i.e. Sarah’s wants me to), I’m doing Mistborn May! Tackling the Era Two series, which happily has much more hand-friendly book sizes. I’ve made a start on Alloy of Law, and am not quite a quarter of the way through.

I also got a sneak preview of my wife’s detective novella! I’ve been pumped about it ever since they started talking about these OCs like 5? 6? years ago. It’s smashing :D

This week I read Mistborn: Era 2.

• An epic follow-up to the first trilogy. It finally gets into the whole Cosmere sci-fantasy stuff that’s the reason I started reading more of Sanderson’s stuff.
• Sarah’s favourite character is my favourite character: Steris is SO AUTISTIC and I love her. She has some of the most relatable feelings about autistic social isolation that I’ve ever read.
• That ending…
• I’m already lining up what Cosmere books I’m gonna read next. I’ve got other things to read (including the 700-page follow-up to Tchaikovsky’s Children of… cycle), but I’m pretty sure that, if I try, I can also get through Warbreaker, The Stormlight Archive, the other standalones… 100% I expect Sanderson to be my most-read author this year.

This week I read Children of Strife, by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

As expected, the series is both profound & wild. Also, the ship captain is an uplifted mantis shrimp. #shrimpcolours were a major part of the climax, which annoyed me at first: shrimps have all those extra rods & cones in their eyes because their brains can’t process colour combinations, so they can’t really see colours humans can’t imagine with our 3 colours. BUT if you give those highly-developed eyes to a mantis shrimp that has enough sapience to play war-games in a space-ship, then probably he could see bizarre colours & wavelengths that a bunch of asshole terraformers who have uploaded themselves into an entire biosphere thanks to a data-collation algorithm in the DNA might (hypothetically) be using to communicate. (Like I said: WILD.)

I also read most of Arcanum Unbounded, Sanderson’s Cosmere short stories & novellas–that is, I’ve read the ones that wouldn’t spoil novels I haven’t read.

For my next book, I’m trying to decide between Sanderson’s Warbreaker, the next Pern novel, or a comic fantasy that Jordon got out of the library & heartily recommended. Next week, I think, Estro Junkies should be coming out, and I’ll probably drop everything to read that one. (I need another transfemme story that’s both well-written and light-hearted. Woodworking is on my list, but it’s going to provoke #emotions for sure.)

Also, in the backgrounds of runs etc, I’m listening to The Hobbit & now Fellowship narrated by Rob Inglis. It’s a 56-CD set, and he sounds like Tolkien himself is reading the books to me.

• Dragonquest, by Anne McCaffrey: this is Book 2 of the Dragonriders of Pern series. I’m kind of just treading old ground here. I read the first 4 books (out of order) at high school, and I’m aiming to actually finish book 5 this time through. (my friend Avron has loaned me some of his books, and a friend from synagogue is threatening to loan me ALL of her Anne McCaffrey collection.)
• Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil, by Oliver Darkshire: Jojo got this out of the library and recommended it to me. It’s got a quirky off-the-wall kind of fantasy vibe, and I do enjoy how it all shook out in the end. But MY G-D, this writer needs to lay off the humourous footnotes! There was a 4-page chapter that had six (6) of them!
• Estro Junkies, by Talia Bhatt & Beth Leigh-Ann: this is an intense book. I read it as soon as it dropped. Loved it. Also totally agree with TFR’s review.

• The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friederich Engels: this is exactly what you expect it is. It does feel like a fundamental starting point if you’re getting into this kind of literature. Just like…
• Compendium of Karl Marx’s Capital, by Carlo Cafiero (translated by Paul M. Perrone): this is essentially a Marx-approved summary of Das Kapital, which I think everyone acknowledges is a dry, dense, and difficult work. This is at most 10% of the length, aimed at the layman, and tbh half the bulk of it is quotes directly from Marx where Cafiero isn’t summarising.
• Platform Decay, by Martha Wells (Murderbot #8): I was having a particularly shit Tuesday, so I bought this one my way home from the office (having left early). It had a bit of a slow start compared to the earlier novellas, and something of a sudden end, but otherwise it’s another rock-solid installment in the series. (I think it’s kind of an awkward length, a bit too long to just smash-and-grab the reader’s attention, but not quite long enough to settle in to a narrative comfortably. YMMV)
• Warbreaker, by Brandon Sanderson: since it was recommended (if I’m gonna read it) to read it prior to The Stormlight Archive, I have done so. As per usual, I found the main characters compelling, the magic system pretentious but not overwrought, and the plot satisfying. If you wanna dip your toe into the Sanderson waters, this is a better-written book than Elantris, though I like them equally.
• Elric of Melniboné, by Michael Moorcock: the first of the Elric books, I decided to finally rip through this one because of the magic sword Nightblood in Warbreaker, which is obviously inspired by Stormbringer. I read The Weird of the White Wolf as a teenager, and while the plot seemed largely inconsequential, the sword in particular stayed with me. I lined these books up a year or two ago, for the #pulp #fantasy research for D&D, but I did enjoy this one. It’s not very long, so easy to “justify” (as if I need to justify my reading lol).

This brings my official count up to 64 at the end of May. I am still listening to Fellowship piecemeal (I pushed through the last of the Tom Bombadil nonsense today, happily). Next on my list is the first volume of Sword Art Online, courtesy of a friend who owns all the light novels & more besides. I’ve got books 2 & 3 of Sanderson’s White Sand graphic novel series (still waiting on whoever at the library is hogging book 1), and I just bought Plastic, Prism, Void, by Violet Allen (on the hyping of @horrorbutch).