My review buses have all arrived at once this week. I have two up today!
First, at @strangehorizons.bsky.social, I covered This Brutal Moon by Bethany Jacobs.
I gathered some thoughts about Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman, which everyone who loves literary science fiction, trans people, and artists should read.
🔗 ladybusiness.dreamwidth.org/2026/03/10/n...
Earth and Hearth: in this month's Small Press Dispatch, @chloroformtea.bsky.social looks at the juxtaposition of form and theme in two quite juxtaposed novellas—Ruthanna Emrys's THE SHELTERING FLAME and Andrew Knighton's WALKING A WOUNDED LAND (@wtpress.bsky.social)
Love me a review of the final volume in a series, but it can be a tough ask for a reviewer. Who do you call for so intrepid a critical task? You call @chloroformtea.bsky.social.
"The thing about politics in the novel is … it’s just people. Bethany Jacobs has grasped this in the Kindom Trilogy."
Sometimes you finish a book and you just gotta write about it immediately, because it's jangling around in your head with another thought. Today was one of those days.
Review of On the Calculation of Volume III by Solvej Balle (tr. Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell).
The Harare Review of Books Is Back with Its First Issue of 2026 and It's a Good One brittlepaper.com/2026/03/the-...
This book is really very good! And quite hard to talk about, in the way that many thoughtful, recontextualise-the-info-as-you-go books often are. But definitely worth a read.
The Misheard World feels, at every moment, intensely carefully crafted, and it is a delight to be left unsettled by it, all the way to the last says @chloroformtea.bsky.social at the NOAF blog:
www.nerds-feather.com/2026/03/book...
There are two things you can do right now to support young trans people in England.
1) Engage in political advocacy and community support. I've got *loads* of advice on this in my blog post and zine "But what can I do? How to fight the trans panic".
Medical transition for trans kids is now banned for new referrals on the NHS. Trans kids in the UK can still go private or DIY (for now).
This means the new clinics that replaced GIDS are close to useless at best, conversion therapy at worst. 1/5
Act 3 beaten by all 5 characters in Slay the Spire 2 just as my first weekend playing it comes to a close.
I'm not particularly good at it so let's not look at how many hours of playtime I already have...
After a month of buildup, may I present...
The Queersar not an award 2020!
10 (+1) great queer SFF novels.
V good year for queer SFF; I found it *really* hard to narrow down to 10. But happy with what's on here & more convinced there *is* a gap in the award landscape for books like these.
Good Morning Womble
I'm currently reading The Misheard World by Aliya Whiteley, very much enjoying it so far but still only early so many revelations I'm sure to come.
And Peter O'Mahony is retired so can't single handedly stomp on their hopes and dreams next week.
Recent court decisions are making it increasingly difficult for trans and nonbinary people to go to work with dignity and privacy. Complete our Workers Survey to help us push the government to update the law and make trans inclusion possible again!
tinyurl.com/TransActualW...
The Poet Laureate of the UK is famous for his translation of St Gawain and the Green Knight, and Kym once got up on stage, looked him straight in the eye, and then performed this.
Unsurprisingly enough, every time they've encountered each other since, he's remembered them.
*Irresistible
Plenty of other typos alas. Don't write threads without checking them before you've finished your first cup of tea...
And somehow the show did all right in the end.
In the same way people will keep on enjoying SFF even if they don't read a chapter and go Ah that's playing with an idea that first originated in a particular Asimov short story.
It's not about bad/good, it's that multiple lenses on a genre still work
"Don't you see when I saw Ned looking at a statue of Lyanna in the crypt I had all these emotions. If I don't explain the entire backstory of the rebellion and R+L=J theory now how will new viewers even like the show. It will fail if they don't have the precise same emotions I'm having."
Back when Game of Thrones' first episode was airing a forum I was on sensibly split discussion into book readers and non book readers threads and yet there was apparently an irresponsible compulsion for some readers to dive in and explain as if they were doing a great service.
It's about need and the believe people seem to hold that if you don't appreciate a text in the exact same way that they do then how can you appreciate a text at all.
I don't think it's about defending or not old SFF.
Anyone who talks about books like car engines, of course the ones now are better than ones from 1950, is an idiot the same as someone who things there hasn't been anything good written in the 21st century.
I am of course very excited to play it but just thoroughly amused about the path from the base game to this expansion.
Let's play Flamme Rouge, it brilliantly stimulates the feel of cycling while only requiring you to play a card and move your rider that many spaces.
Let's play Flamme Rouge Grand Tour:
Yesterday evening, for the second time in a year, the Met Police raided Westminster Quaker Meeting House and arrested a number of young nonviolent activists.
STATEMENT: www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-eve...
Decided I might as well give Slay the Spire 2 a go in early access.
Run 1, Ironclad: Die to the first map boss.
Run 2, Silent: Complete all three maps with ease.
#roguesupremacy
#whatifIjustthrowalotofpoisoneddaggers
part who-knows-what of an ongoing conversation with myself, in column form! these are not final, authoritative thoughts, partly because I am just not that interested in final, authoritative thoughts, but I do authoritatively feel that an us vs. them approach to genres is a mistake
I've always had a soft spot for the History plays and both of the Richards take the lead there.
Richard III gives the lead such a fun role and there's just some lovely language scattered all through Richard II.
