@chloroformtea.bsky.social
SFF enthusiast, hobby-collector, blogger, shouter-at-the-internet. Editor at Ignyte and Hugo winner Nerds of a Feather, along with reviews elsewhere. 2025 Hugo Fan Writer finalist. All links here: https://linktr.ee/roseanna.pendlebury (she/her).
(we still do it, just at the end instead)
Amused/pleased that this pretty much exactly aligns with how our book club runs. I think the only point of difference that isn’t due to constraints outside of our control is we stopped doing the thumbs up/down thing at the start as it was giving more aggro, polarised meetings rather than discursive.
Oh my god it got better. Which means I’m going to have to figure out how to talk about sex scenes in a review, because I will absolutely HAVE to talk about that one.
I’m having a great time
Especially delighted because
I was not expecting a Catullus reference in my sapphic Moby Dick in space book, and I am DELIGHTED.
To the tune of Holiday by Madonna:
Nomina-ate!
Okay, nomination eligible folks. I want to see NUMBERS. I want us to beat the record of the most ever Hugo nominations. I don't actually know what the record is, but I believe we can fly past it!
Don't forget to nominate and to show the fan categories some love!
100%, and I really really loved that.
But also really appreciated Longman just out and saying their approach: I loved going into the story knowing they had a clear thesis on how they were going about it. More intro notes setting out the author’s intent pls and thank.
It’s SO GOOD. For all the ways you say, but also I think Longman does a great job with the approach to historicity, especially how they talk about it in their intro note.
review of @finnlongman.com's The Wolf and His King: anduilleaggheal.neocities.org/leirmheasan/...
extremely good retelling of Marie de France's lai Bisclavret; gorgeous prose; sophisticated exploration of disability, alienation, and desire. read this, people!
Tempted to book tickets to see Arcadia again as like… spiritual cleansing.
God it was bad. We’re just walking home and I keep having to stop and exclaim about how bad it was.
In stark contrast to Arcadia, just seen one of the worst plays I’ve been to in a good while. I would describe it as “tedious shouting”, and that might be generous. It was also a Russian play from 1904 so it lasted approximately 15 years.
can't believe it took me this long to start reading Notes from a Regicide by Isaac R. Fellman, but damn, y'all aren't nearly feral enough about this book.
Prompted by @abigailnussbaum.bsky.social’s (excellent, correct) letter of comment to @octothorpecast.bsky.social reminding us to cast our nets wider in nominating novellas for the Hugo awards, I’m just re-upping my thread in which I suggest some excellent options.
Small press novellas: still great.
Today at the NOAF blog, @gabrielle-h.bsky.social interviews Nine-Tenths author J.M. Frey ( @jmfrey.bsky.social )
www.nerds-feather.com/2026/03/inte...
Yeah I’m really hoping they keep translating them at pace, so I can keep finding out where it’s going (or not) next.
Love this essay. "As critics we provide a service—not of explanation or puzzle solving, but rather of showing the expanded possibilities for what a book could mean, what it meant to us and could thus mean to other readers."
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...
What I'm learning today is a lot of people have great options for "secret third thing".
These two are quite different stories, but have some really interesting and productive interplay between them in thinking about land, place and ownership, and using fantastical elements to emphasise and engage with those topics.
Second, it's monthly column time!
This month's Small Press Dispatch at @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org is a two-for-one special, looking at The Sheltering Flame by Ruthanna Emrys and Walking a Wounded Land by Andrew Knighton.
This is a book full of complex, messy personal relationships and complex, messy politics, and they are both kind of the same thing. It's also getting some use out of religion as a structure in the world, which is... rarer than it ought to be in SFF.
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.
Big mmhmmmm. Some things I've read that are 100% a review - a piece of text focussed on a specific book/film with a sense of rating it qualitatively and a side of "should you consume this" - are also some of the smartest, most interesting things I've read on the internet.
While a bunch of my reviews definitely do fall under tempting/distempting, I don't think that's all of them. I would argue some are more "here is a book and me responding to it", which I would still consider a review but also not really linked into any sense of selling the thing. Just... responding?
