Skip navigation

Platform Decay: A Review

Murderbot’s back!

Really, that could be the whole review, and I know so many of y’all would be okay with that and a five star rating. I’m going to give you more than that, obviously, because we love Murderbot. How could we not?

Platform Decay follows on the heels of System Collapse, with our beloved rogue SecUnit setting off on a rescue mission. Dr. Mensah’s spouse Farai, their daughter, and Farai’s mother. Naturally, this rescue mission involves Murderbot breaking into one of its least favorite space-bound structures, a torus. These doughnut-shaped space stations are ridiculously complex to navigate due to their sheer size and the fact that the interior is broken up into independently governed sectors. It’s also on one of these structures that Farai and her family are being held under Barish-Estranza supervision.

Murderbot’s arrival on the torus is assisted by Three, one of the other SecUnits that Murderbot taught to hack its own governor module back in Network Effect. While Three is busy causing a distraction, Murderbot will slip in, find Farai, and get out again. Or at least, that was the plan. Things never go according to plan.

See, there’s a Barish-Estranza executive on the torus too, and she knows Murderbot. When our Friendly Neighborhood SecUnit reaches Farai, the executive is there, but not to stop it. She needs to get her own family out of BE’s reach, and she is willing to bargain with Murderbot to ensure their safety. So begins a trek across the station with multiple civilians in tow. It’s going to take all of Murderbot’s already-strained patience to get them back to their ship before BE catches them.

I love these books so much, y’all. They’re fun, quick reads with a spectacular balance of tension and humor. Murderbot’s working through some things in the wake of previous books’ events/traumas, and finding itself thrown into a much more complicated escort mission does not do anything to improve its mood.

Platform Decay came out back in May, and I’ve just been swamped with other things and had this review in drafts for *looks* YIKES. Two months. So. Sorry about the delay there. Point is, it’s a great book. Thanks to NetGalley and Tor for an eARC copy in exchange for a fair review.

The Duke: A Review

Today, we’re mixing things up a bit with a review a bit outside my usual wheelhouse here. I don’t usually talk up romance novels, but something about Anna Cowan’s The Duke struck me as being worthy of focus. Maybe it’s because it’s a queer romance, maybe it’s because it’s set in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Regardless, it’s fun.

Celine is a courtesan, desperate to escape the political turmoil of France in the late 1700s. When a client and protector, Bastien, is informed that his own head is on the line, he promises Celine that he’ll match her with the Duke of Howard, a British noble and childhood friend of his coming to visit. Celine knows that name and the reputation that follows. The Duke of Howard is a woman, Kate, known for her refusal to take a man into her bed. That very night, Celine finds herself cornered by a stranger in Bastien’s home. The two briefly exchange words before Celine realizes that this person rifling through Bastien’s desk in search of something is none other than the Duke herself, arrived nearly a week earlier than anticipated. Tensions rise quickly, and the two pass the remainder of the night in a heated flurry of kisses and climaxes. In the morning, the Duke departs, convinced that Bastien is no longer in possession of a letter she had once written him. With his impending demise, Kate thoroughly believes that no one in France now knows of the secrets it contained. Her business concluded and her appetites exhaustively sated, Kate returns to England, but not before leaving a gold ring on Celine’s finger. The remainder of the ongoing revolution should have erased any other traces of her trip.

Three years later, the Duke has established herself in her role in London and its politics. All is going her way until a guest calls at her estate, bearing her once-gifted ring. Celine, it seems, has survived the turmoil in Paris and made her way across the channel. She informs Kate that, not only did she find Bastien’s letter from long ago, she read it. Celine is now aware of the potential treason that Kate committed in youth, the act that removed the rest of her family from society and established herself as the Duke of Howard. Furious at being used and abandoned by Kate, Celine threatens her with blackmail. She demands that Kate find her a husband and a place in society so that she will never again know want or loneliness. Not entirely unreasonable, considering how the Duke treated her. With everything to lose, Kate begins her hurried plan to find the most eligible bachelors in London, trying to make Celine over from prostitute to proper lady.

Years, though, have done little to curb the deep desire that both women still feel for one another. For Kate, guiding Celine through the parts of British society that she had personally shunned for years only serves to increase her need for the other woman. Neither of them is fully willing to forget what they had that one night in Paris. Will Celine give up her pursuit of a husband if she can win over the Duke? Will Kate surrender to her long-hidden emotions and allow herself to publicly take a wife? They could be the most powerful couple that London has seen… if they don’t kill each other first.

The Duke is a spectacularly well-written sapphic romance. Anna Cowan weaves a tale of a version of London that might have been, seamlessly blending regency standards with compelling queer characters and ridiculously intense sex scenes. It’s out in the world as of yesterday, 4/28/26, and I would highly recommend that you check it out. My thanks as always to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Wait, What?

Okay. It’s somehow been a month since my last post on here, and even longer since the last one that wasn’t a book review. Sorry, y’all. It’s been… The last three months have been chaotic, and rarely in good ways. We have been dealing with the aftermath of an unexpected death, a resultant shift to full time custody of my stepchildren, and a loss of some of the concomitant financial support. This is, of course, on top of handling the associated emotional strain. I’ve not been saying a lot online, but it’s definitely made this year harder than we had wanted it to be.

We’re still here, though. V and the kids and I are still here.

So, what’s been good? Work continues, and I’m loving the job that I do. I’m frustrated by so much of my employer’s leadership structure struggling to be a microcosm of the current US presidential administration, but I’m happily pushing forward as VP of our employee union and trying to make things better for my coworkers and patrons alike.

I’ve been playing a lot (arguably too much) Magic: the Gathering, participating in my first pre-release events/tournaments ever with Lorwyn Eclipsed and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles already. I did the tournament for Secrets of Strixhaven at my LGS this past weekend, too. I’ve dropped off a bit from Minecraft time with the kids, with some single-player stuff like Halo: The Master Chief Collection taking up a lot of my PC hours. I’m hoping to correct that a bit, but my work schedule changed at the beginning of January, and I’m doing more evening shifts than before. It’s good to get to be teaching more classes for patrons, but I do miss having an hour of just dorking around in Minecraft with V and #MediumChild most evenings. I have been diving back in to a lot of comfort reads, including a full re-read of Bleach earlier this year and re-starting One Piece a few weeks ago.

The school year is somehow nearly over already, and that means that it’ll be Ren Faire season again before I know it. It’s a lot of work as always, but it’s also a lot of fun, and an opportunity to see a lot of folks that I only see once a year.

Other things I’m looking forward to:

Playing more D&D with the spouse and family. New Murderbot Diaries book. #TinyChild finishing kindergarten and #TiniestChild starting school in the fall. Potentially attending my 20-year high school reunion. My own birthday in a few weeks. The inevitable fall of US fascists from power (sooner rather than later would be my preference, but hey…).

Anyway.

Let’s just take it all one day at a time.

I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?

You Should Have Been Nicer to My Mom: A Review

When Xiomara decides to brave a threatening storm to attend the reading of her Papi Ramon’s will, she has no idea just what she’s in for. She expects her aunts and uncles (Papi’s surviving children) to be horrible, and for her cousins to gossip. For her, that’s all part of being a member of a large Dominican family. Still, since her mother died, Xiomara feels obligated to represent her part of the family and to spare her own father from dealing with his in-laws. It won’t be for more than a few hours anyway, and then she’ll be free of them.

Arriving at Papi Ramon’s house, she finds her grandfather’s home aide, Naomi, and a handful of the other members of the Abreu family waiting for the arrival of Papi’s lawyer. Tensions only rise as old conflicts resurface, with each other arriving relative bringing plenty of baggage. For Xiomara, memories are fiddly. It seems that there are stories of Papi Ramon’s life as a minister that only she remembers him telling, and no one has any idea why she would have been told that he was an exorcist.

When the lawyer finally arrives, the chaos only grows. The will simply states that one of the people in the room is a demon that Papi made a deal with years ago. The Abreus have twelve hours to destroy the demon or they will all be damned. Almost immediately, the family begins to argue with the lawyer, demanding to see the real will that must have been replaced. There’s no way this can possibly be real. Papi Ramon was a good man, wasn’t he? How could he possibly have made a deal with a demon? There’s no such thing, right?

Xiomara, though. Xiomara sees the paper, and realizes that what the lawyer had read as “Hugs and Kisses” was simply XO. A nod to her childhood nickname. A directive. She knows then that she has to solve this mystery to save herself, and Naomi, and, she supposes, the rest of her aunts, uncles, and cousins. This is the beginning of her quest, but an additional complication is soon added. When the lawyer leaves to go find the “real will” that must have been swapped out, Naomi finds a letter demanding that the Abreus confess to their sins, or they will be revealed to the world.

The storm outside soon matches the energy of the drama inside. While they’re trapped by the raging weather, Xiomara has to navigate her toxic family members as their darkest secrets begin leaking online, and a demon may or may not be stalking them all throughout the rooms of Papi Ramon’s house.

Vincent Tirado has absolutely nailed the dynamics of the Abreu family. You Should Have Been Nicer to My Mom is a tight, thrilling horror novella. I love that they included a piece at the end of the book giving less informed readers (like myself) a nice primer on the conflicts between Dominicans and Haitians that play such a large role in the story. It provided some excellent context for the Abreu family’s feelings toward Naomi and why they felt so entitled to continue to treat her like hired help even after Papi Ramon’s death. All in all, this was a ridiculously enjoyable book to read. The tension is played brilliantly, and Xiomara’s growing desperation and increasingly transparent attempts to get away from her relatives are nearly flawless. My utmost thanks to William Morrow and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

You Should Have Been Nicer to My Mom hit shelves on Tuesday, 3/10/2026. Go check it out.

To Ride a Rising Storm: A Review

The much-awaited sequel to To Shape a Dragon’s Breath is here at last! When Moniquill Blackgoose’s queer indigenous dragon rider novel was released in May of 2023, I was thrilled at the idea of getting a follow-up book. How could I not want to spend more time in that world?

Anequs and her dragon, Kasaqua, have made it through their first year of school at Kuiper Academy. Due to Anequs’s successes and skill, she has been allowed to take Kasaqua back home from the city of Vastergot to the small island of Masquapaug. They are accompanied by Theod, the only other indigenous student at Kuiper, and his dragon, Copper. However, neither of them is free from Anglish oversight now that an outpost has been formally installed on Masquapaug.

Anequs is torn. She knows that Theod has feelings for her, and she reciprocates most of them. She is also attracted to Liberty, a servant at Kuiper academy, and Anglish society would frown on their relationship for both class and gender reasons. Anequs would love to be able to marry both of them, as is relatively common on Masquapaug, but utterly unheard of in Anglish culture. Pressure is being placed on her and Theod as the dragoneers to help the people of Masquapaug and the other nearby islands to push back against Anglish overreach.

The world around Anequs is changing, though, in part due to her presence in it. People are more afraid of her and Kasaqua than ever before. Her opposition to white supremacists has resulted in many students withdrawing from Kuiper Academy in protest, but at the same time, there are now more female students enrolled at one time than ever before. She’s forced to be apart from Kasaqua more often, as the dragon has grown too large to be able to stroll along at her heels through the halls of the school (although she should soon be large enough for Anequs to ride comfortably).

Monequil Blackgoose’s world remains just as fascinating as it was on the first go around. I love the way an alternate history has been woven to reflect how the world would have developed had dragons actually existed. Characters insert the stories they are telling to one another throughout the book, adding a great level of depth to the mythology of the world. Anequs remains steadfast in her determination to live life the way she intends to do, and she has quickly become one of my favorite protagonists in fantasy fiction.

To Ride a Rising Storm hit store shelves last month, 1/27/26. I’m sorry for the delay in getting this review out to y’all, but life has been *a lot* these last few weeks. My utmost thanks, though, as always, to NetGalley and Del Rey for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Through Gates of Garnet and Gold: A Review

Every January, I look forward to the release of the newest title in Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series. 2026 was no exception. I’ve loved this series since Every Heart a Doorway, and I’m happy to say that the most recent entry is just as fantastic.

When Nancy first arrived at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, she had recently returned to our world from a land known as the Halls of the Dead. There, Nancy had been favored by the Lord and the Lady as one of their most beautiful and elegant living statues, holding so still for hours on end that she could barely be perceived as living. At Eleanor’s school, she learned that she was hardly alone, as one of dozens of children who had journeyed to distant, incredible worlds and then reluctantly returned home. After an adventure with her new classmates, Nancy soon rediscovered the Door that would lead her back to the Halls of the Dead, and she departed without saying farewell. Later, a group of students on another quest made their way to the Halls in order to retrieve the soul of a student who had been murdered (she got better). There, they encountered Nancy again and enlisted her aid in convincing the Lord and the Lady to let that murdered soul go with them to be placed in a freshly baked body (I promise it makes sense in context).

Now, Nancy has returned to Eleanor’s school in order to seek out the aid of the classmates she once left behind. Something is stalking the Halls of the Dead and attacking the statues there. Something hungry. Something violent. Something that made Nancy uncertain enough in her place there that she was able to find and open the Door to take her back to the school.

The students who remember Nancy are now fewer in number, as many of them have found their own Doors back home. There are still familiar faces, though, and Kade and Christopher and Sumi are willing to break Eleanor’s “No Quests” rule one more time, along with a newcomer, Talia. With Nancy’s guidance, they return to the Halls of the Dead to discover the true identity of the threat and save the remaining peaceful souls that linger there.

Through Gates of Garnet and Gold is an absolutely spectacular return to world of the Wayward Children. McGuire’s blend of humor and horror is ever-present, as is expected of any team-up involving Christopher and Sumi. Callbacks to the earlier entries in the series are found throughout, and we get the wonderful experience of following Nancy as she examines what it really means to “Be Sure.” Nancy’s leading role aside, there are a couple of unexpected reunions in this one, but I’ll let you experience those for yourself.

My utmost thanks, as always, to NetGalley and Tor for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Through Gates of Garnet and Gold came out on Tuesday, January 6th, 2026. Go check it out.

Brigands & Breadknives: A Review

Travis Baldree may not have set out to turn the fantasy world upside down with his first novel, Legends & Lattes, but he definitely managed to shake things up by introducing us to Viv the orc. Viv was a retired adventurer who had given up her rough and tumble daily life to open the first ever coffee shop in the city of Thune with the aid of Tandri, a local succubus. While this turned out to be a drastically different sort of adventure, she found herself falling in love with big city life. Baldree’s follow-up, Bookshops & Bonedust, gave us an earlier portion of Viv’s life when she was recovering from an injury in the small seaside town of Murk. It was there that she met Fern, a rattkin bookseller who traded Viv books in exchange for help in revitalizing her store. We got to see Viv as she was before her first cup of coffee sent her life down a completely different path.

Brigands & Breadknives picks up after the events of the first book. Years have passed now, and Viv’s coffee business is booming. She and Tandri (now Viv’s wife), are excited to welcome Fern to Thune, where they have all planned for the rattkin’s new bookstore to be located next door to the coffee shop. It doesn’t take long for Fern to begin to feel unsatisfied with the change in her life, though, questioning whether she should have ever left Murk. After a drunken night trying to build up the courage to confess these feelings to Viv, Fern finds herself waking up in a wagon with the legendary elf adventurer, Astryx One-Ear and her equally legendary Elder Blade, Nigel (don’t get him started). Astryx is on a mission to deliver a bounty, the goblin Zyll, and she reluctantly allows Fern to travel with them. Swept away from everything the bookseller has ever known, Fern is remarkably out of place in the company of someone of Astryx’s stature. Initially, she’s only wanting to send a letter of apology to Viv and get back to Thune as quickly as possible. Throughout the course of the journey, though, she begins to find her own courage. It may be late in life for a hero’s journey, but adventure rarely strikes when we’re ready.

Astryx isn’t the only one looking to cash in on the bounty on Zyll’s head. This, naturally, complicates things, as does Astryx’s own penchant to be the folk hero she’s spent most of the last thousand years being. Fern’s journey ends up taking her much farther from home than she ever anticipated.

Baldree mixes up his cozy fantasy formula quite a bit with this title, but to no great loss. While we don’t spend as much time with Viv and Tandri as many readers might have hoped, we’re still treated to phenomenal moments of calm amidst the storms. It’s an absolute pleasure to return to this world again, seeing new cities and the lands in between them and meeting a whole new cast of characters.

My utmost thanks to NetGalley and Tor for providing an eARC of this title in exchange for a fair review. I’m sorry it’s late. Brigands & Breadknives has been out in the world since November 11th. I loved it, and I hope you do to.

Lies Weeping: A Review

When I first encountered Glen Cook’s The Chronicles of the Black Company, I was fresh out of college and working at Borders (it was 2010, and the economy was garbage, and it was the only work I could get, despite a degree in technical writing). I found the original ten of Cook’s fantasy novels (published between 1984 and 2000) in large paperback omnibus editions, and I was immediately entranced by the cover art and the premise of a mercenary band roaming across a fantasy empire and struggling to survive against all odds. It would be over a decade before I managed to sit down with them, and at the time I was unaware that Glen Cook was not only still alive but also still writing, continuing the adventures of Croaker, Goblin, One-Eye, Lady, and all the others. I recently had the opportunity to go through the audiobook versions of the entire series in anticipation of the release of Lies Weeping, a new volume set after the events of Soldiers Live.

The Black Company as it was is no more. Soulcatcher and her forces were finally defeated, and Taglios was freed from her rule. The heroes who were trapped beneath the Plain of Glittering Stone were freed to participate in the final battle, and many were lost in the struggle. Now the Company is lead by Suvrin, who had once served as Sleepy’s lieutenant. They have returned from Taglios, through the Shadowgate into Hsien, to the outpost known as An Abode of Ravens. Taking over as co-annalists are Arkana and Shukrat, two young women from the world known to the company as Khatovar who were taken in by Croaker and Lady. Lady herself remains with the company, but with the defeat of the goddess Kina, her magic is greatly diminished once again. Shukrat and Arkana may bicker over how best to maintain Croaker’s legacy with the Company’s annals, but they’re still working together. Croaker himself is no longer with the Company, having taken the role once held by the demon Shivetya as the guardian of the Plain of Glittering Stone. Now with his burgeoning omniscience, he can monitor all the comings and goings of his loved ones back and forth through time, even when his physical form is still bound to the throne beneath the Plain.

Things are not quite what they all seem at An Abode. Packs of roving monkeys are threatening the Company’s food supply as winter approaches. Strange spirits appear to be haunting Tobo, the Company’s primary mage and friend of the Unknown Shadows. Arkana and Shukrat have spotted an old man wandering about near the outpost, and of all the impossible things, he looks like Croaker. Lady, meanwhile, is crafting a plan to try to restore her daughter, Booboo, to a level of health and sanity she had never in her short life possessed. The only hints anyone has received have been in the form of mysterious notes posted about An Abode, and the whispered phrase “Lies Weeping.”

Glen Cook is launching a new continuation of The Chronicles of the Black Company, with Lies Weeping being the first novel in a A Pitiless Rain. He’s deftly weaving together his original novels with his more recent work like Port of Shadows. Arkana and Shukrat serve as our primary narrators in this book, with amendments by a young man named Dikken in interstitial chapters. This book strikes me as a fine addition to the series that I’ve come to love so much in recent months. My utmost thanks to Tor Books and Netgalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Lies Weeping came out last Tuesday, 11/4/25. If you’re a Black Company fan, you should snag this one ASAP. If you’re not yet a fan, now’s as good a time to start as any.

King Sorrow: A Review

Joe Hill’s new novel, King Sorrow, is his first full-length work in almost a decade, and I feel it was absolutely worth the wait.

King Sorrow is the story of Arthur Oakes and his friends, and the dragon to which they find themselves pact-bound. It’s New England in the early 90s, and Arthur is a young black man working in the campus library at Rackham College. His mother is serving a prison sentence at a nearby facility, and so he stays close by so that he can continue to visit her as her parole date approaches. Arthur has his eyes on a graduate program in England once he graduates, but his plans are disrupted when a blackmail scheme is launched against him. His mother has made some enemies on the inside, and the daughter of one threatens injury to Arthur’s mom unless he cooperates. So it is that Arthur begins to steal rare books from the college library’s collection for the blackmailers to sell.

Arthur’s friends eventually find out about what’s going on, of course, but they realize that one of the books that Arthur has been instructed to steal might contain the answers to their problem. The Crane journal, a grimoire bound in human skin, has been a part of the rare book collection for years, and inside it are the instructions to summon King Sorrow, a dragon who is willing to make pacts with humans. One night, in a weed and booze-fueled haze, the group gathers around a table and calls out to him. A bargain is struck. Arthur’s blackmailers will be dead by Easter, and he and his friends will be protected.

The problem with deals, though, is always in the details. Arthur and his friends soon learn that they must choose a new sacrificial offering once a year, or their own lives are forfeit. If the only way to summon King Sorrow is found in the grimoire, then the way to rid oneself of him must be contained in it as well, but the book itself made its way to the blackmailers and their buyer before the Easter deadline.

King Sorrow is a fantastic slow burn. I’ve missed Hill’s writing a great deal of late, but I was thrilled to get a chance to tackle this one early. It was released on 10/21, and so it’s been loose in the world for almost a week. My utmost thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for providing an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Queen Demon: A Review

The sequel to Martha Wells’ phenomenal Witch King is here!

In the distant past, the Hierarchs entered the world and seized power. They killed indiscriminately, razing city-states, exerting control over everything, and turning families against themselves. Many tried to stand against them and failed, and for a time, they were believed to be unstoppable. That changed with the arrival of Kaiisteron, Prince of the Fourth House of the Underearth, the one who would come to be known as the Witch King. Kai was a demon inhabiting a human body, and when his host’s people were overrun by the Hierarchs, he was captured. Soon, however, he was taken in by a local nobleman named Bashasa. Bashasa had been preparing to launch a revolution, and befriending Kai forces him to accelerate the plans, as together they manage to kill a pair of Hierarchs.

Decades later, Kai and his allies were split up and imprisoned, left for dead by a group of conspirators who sought to seize control of the Rising World and establish a new empire. They underestimated him. During the events of Witch King, Kai took a new host body, rescued his best friend Ziede, and set off to find out who had betrayed them and why. Classic revenge quest.

Now, reunited with his friends and found family, Kai has a new goal: investigate the origins of the Hierarchs and ensure that they can return to threaten the Rising World again. At the end of Witch King, Dahin, Ziede’s brother-in-law, was hot on the trail of the origin of the Hierarchs. Now he may have proof that those origins are not what everyone believed, and that the Hierarchs are not as fully gone as everyone would like.

Kai must still grapple with the past in Queen Demon, with chapters alternating the early days of the rebellion against the Hierarchs and the modern day struggle for the mysterious Well that powered their abilities. Both timelines see the Fourth Prince navigating the complexities of human relationships, war, and politics. Kai’s growth as a character is evident, largely due to the death of his rescuer, Bashasa, at some point in the past. The legacy he left behind is clearly still serving as Kai’s guiding star as he navigates through his relationships with humans, witches, and other demons.

Martha Wells has been a favorite author for years, since I first picked up a copy of All Systems Red. I love the setting of the Rising World novels, and I will happily return any time we get the opportunity.

Queen Demon is out in the world as of Tuesday, 10/7/25. Go get it.

My utmost thanks, as always, to Netgalley and Tor for an advance copy in exchange for a fair review.