What are you reading in 2026?

[jian]

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Koto string.

Ah, that is helpful. So they can come in spools or long coils and be cut as needed? That seems weird (and not mentioned in the book, but I guess he thought everyone would know).

 

[Retros_x]

Read The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Vampires by Grady Hendrix, as recommended by this thread. It was great, delightful in places, horrible in others. The husbands’ collective betrayal halfway through the book was probably my favourite bit, it made me exclaim out loud (“Of course you did, you complete pieces of sh*t,”) which I almost never do when reading.

I am also reading it right now (thx to @Whizbang Dustyboots ) and this part got my blood boiling. The unfairness and helplesness felt real. I am right before the finale starts I think (Patricia just left... the attic), and I hope some of these husbands meet their end. I am definitely emotionally invested now - which took a bit time. The writing style felt oddly distanced for most part of the novel and I was a bit unsure what to expect, especially pacing-wise. Multiple times I thought - "oh, now the action starts" only for the author to stop the tempo again to a halt.

Many reviewers compare it to King, especially to Salems Lot - which interestingly enough I also started reading in Octobre but have paused for now. But I think the similarities are only superficial. Kings character work feels much stronger and his horror also gets more under my skin. Hendrix rarely gets a spook out of me, although the events happening are gruesome. Not sure why exactly.

 

[jian]

I am also reading it right now (thx to @Whizbang Dustyboots ) and this part got my blood boiling. The unfairness and helplesness felt real. I am right before the finale starts I think (Patricia just left... the attic), and I hope some of these husbands meet their end. I am definitely emotionally invested now - which took a bit time. The writing style felt oddly distanced for most part of the novel and I was a bit unsure what to expect, especially pacing-wise. Multiple times I thought - "oh, now the action starts" only for the author to stop the tempo again to a halt.

Many reviewers compare it to King, especially to Salems Lot - which interestingly enough I also started reading in Octobre but have paused for now. But I think the similarities are only superficial. Kings character work feels much stronger and his horror also gets more under my skin. Hendrix rarely gets a spook out of me, although the events happening are gruesome. Not sure why exactly.

The way it covers actually quite a long period of time (five years or so?) with occasional long breaks is quite realistic in a certain sort of way. The vampire isn’t a one-month terror, he infiltrates an entire community and gains their trust without cheating (as in, without any obvious mind control powers) and that would take time, including at last a long fallow period where everyone just gets used to him.

It makes the jump scares more scary, and the whole idea that the protagonists decide to accept him despite (in some cases) the evidence of their own eyes is both true to life and horrifying, as well as making them complicit in the betrayal of Mrs Greene and her community. It’s just a much better metaphor for how evil enters and becomes incorporated into a community and people’s lives than a short horror film. You’d definitely have to do it as a series.

I loved every single member of the book group and their friendship, and how it develops over time - it’s genuine and sparkling. It reminds me of Sky Castle, a Korean drama about a group of families who come through something not entirely dissimilar (but not at all supernatural) in that a certain sort of evil infiltrates their lives and becomes overwhelming until they reject it, and the women at least are stronger and more united for it.

 

[prabe]

Many reviewers compare it to King, especially to Salems Lot - which interestingly enough I also started reading in Octobre but have paused for now. But I think the similarities are only superficial. Kings character work feels much stronger and his horror also gets more under my skin. Hendrix rarely gets a spook out of me, although the events happening are gruesome. Not sure why exactly.

I haven't read The Southern Book Club's Guide to Vampires, but based on the other Hendrix I've read, the difference might be that Hendrix often seems to be laughing at his characters, mocking them; King almost never does this, especially his mains.

(I'll admit I have gotten tired of Grady Hendrix and am not reading him at the moment, so my thoughts might be ... skewed.)

 

[Autumnal]

I finished Truth and Fear, the second volume in Peter Higgins’ Wolfhound Empire trilogy, set in a fantasy realm like Stalinist Russia in many ways. I could try to say a lot about this book, but it may be more useful to quote a bit from the openings of consecutive chapters.

Chapter 72:

The Pollandore’s massive detonation of possibility and different sunlight sweeps outwards across the continent from its epicentre on Chazia’s train. It roars like an exploding shock wave through the certainty of things, gathering momentum as it goes, and the world of history unfolding stumbles, brought up suddenly smack against the truth of human dream and desire. In the trenches of the war and the bitterness of drab town streets the air is suddenly, briefly, rich with the smell of rain on broken earth; another voice is heard, not in the ears but in the blood, and for the brief unsustainable duration of the moment of the Pollandore’s passing, nothing, nothing anywhere dies at all.

Chapter 73:

Mirgorod, war city.

Elena Cornelius survived alone. Elena’s Mirgorod was zero city, thrown back a thousand years, order and meaning and all the small daily habits of use and illusion scorched and blasted away, the concepts themselves eradicated. Money wasn’t money any more when it had no value and there was nothing to buy. Food was what you found or stole. Clothing against the cold and the night lay around free for the taking on the unburied corpses of the dead. Homes weren’t security, shelter and belonging: they were broken buildings, burned and burst open to the elements, the intimate objects of interior domestic life scattered on the streets. Apartments were boxes to shut yourself in and wait for the bomb blasts, the fires, the starvation.

She kept moving, ate scraps scavenged from bombed buildings, drank water from rooftop pools and melted snow. She risked being shot for a looter, which she was, and she hid from the conscripters. She existed day by day in the timeless zero city, alien, unrooted, a sentience apart, belonging to nothing. Herself alone.

So the thing about Truth and Fear is that its setting and story encompass both of those. I’m impressed and deeply satisfied. Looking forward to volume 3.

 

[Retros_x]

The way it covers actually quite a long period of time (five years or so?) with occasional long breaks is quite realistic in a certain sort of way. The vampire isn’t a one-month terror, he infiltrates an entire community and gains their trust without cheating (as in, without any obvious mind control powers) and that would take time, including at last a long fallow period where everyone just gets used to him.

Yes I liked that aspect, how evil slowly enters a community, corrupting it. Works as a metaphor on many levels and the novel is not subtle about it. But I was more speaking about the dramatic pacing. Some of the scares and action in the beginning of the movie felt like entering a final phase - but than it didn't happen. I would've enjoyed the evidence of his evil to be more subtle in the beginning and not the main character being an eye witness so early in the novel.

The whole beginning part with someone climbing on their roof, the granny telling the villains backstory, the ratswarm killing the granny brutally, the protagonist literally watching the villain suck the blood out of a child - these felt oddly placed in the book, these were scenes I would've place closer to the climax while many scenes later in the book I would've placed earlier (kids becoming lethartic and grumpy, moods of characters change etc.) . I don't have anything against the long time span, its more how the scares were placed and the weird episodic structure I didn't like that much.

Also I only started to care about characters when something traumatic happened to them. Thats not a sign of good character writing. I can't put exactly my finger on it, but for example Stephen King manages to make me care about characters before they suffer (and a lot of non-horror authors manage to do it even easier complete without suffer).

On the other hand I read it gets a TV adaption and I think this has potential. The novel structure is perfect for TV and when they expand on the community and characters this could turn out quite good.

but based on the other Hendrix I've read, the difference might be that Hendrix often seems to be laughing at his characters, mocking them; King almost never does this, especially his mains.

Hmm... In this book he doesn't seem quite mocking them, at least not the main character. But the characters feel satirical and exxagerated, maybe its that.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I finished Egan's Permutation City. Cerebral, thought-provoking, its vision of transhumanism fills me with a creeping horror. The message is shown, not told. I also re-read William Gibson's Burning Chrome. Still amazing. Again, it's striking how early these ideas were beginning to take shape. Fragments of a Holographic Rose, despite being more a lyric vignette than the coming razor-sharp Sprawl fiction, was published in 1977.

Now I'm reading George Alec Effinger's The Exile Kiss, the last full novel in the Budayeen Cycle.

 

[jian]

Yes I liked that aspect, how evil slowly enters a community, corrupting it. Works as a metaphor on many levels and the novel is not subtle about it. But I was more speaking about the dramatic pacing. Some of the scares and action in the beginning of the movie felt like entering a final phase - but than it didn't happen. I would've enjoyed the evidence of his evil to be more subtle in the beginning and not the main character being an eye witness so early in the novel.

The whole beginning part with someone climbing on their roof, the granny telling the villains backstory, the ratswarm killing the granny brutally, the protagonist literally watching the villain suck the blood out of a child - these felt oddly placed in the book, these were scenes I would've place closer to the climax while many scenes later in the book I would've placed earlier (kids becoming lethartic and grumpy, moods of characters change etc.) . I don't have anything against the long time span, its more how the scares were placed and the weird episodic structure I didn't like that much.

Also I only started to care about characters when something traumatic happened to them. Thats not a sign of good character writing. I can't put exactly my finger on it, but for example Stephen King manages to make me care about characters before they suffer (and a lot of non-horror authors manage to do it even easier complete without suffer).

On the other hand I read it gets a TV adaption and I think this has potential. The novel structure is perfect for TV and when they expand on the community and characters this could turn out quite good.

Hmm... In this book he doesn't seem quite mocking them, at least not the main character. But the characters feel satirical and exxagerated, maybe its that.

Yeah, exactly. I think the fake climax halfway through the book is making a pretty specific statement, which is something like “yup, this is where the book would end if it was set in Maine, but this is South Carolina, so it’s time for our second villain, complacent patriarchy.”

It does affect the pacing a lot (and does feel rather janky) but I think it intensifies the horror, because our heroines have had a mask off moment and it drives them into depression and desperation (even if we don’t always see all of it, as with Grace). And it takes attacks on their own for them to wake up and finally commit; Mrs Greene is always there to remind them them of that, and of what cowards they were before.

 

[Autumnal]

I finished Egan's Permutation City. Cerebral, thought-provoking, its vision of transhumanism fills me with a creeping horror. The message is shown, not told. I also re-read William Gibson's Burning Chrome. Still amazing. Again, it's striking how early these ideas were beginning to take shape. Fragments of a Holographic Rose, despite being more a lyric vignette than the coming razor-sharp Sprawl fiction, was published in 1977.

Now I'm reading George Alec Effinger's The Exile Kiss, the last full novel in the Budayeen Cycle.

That’s a great lineup. Egan excels at calmly presenting truly chilling prospects. The chair legs and the intruders are both ghastly in different ways.

Cyberpunk was in the air - people as different as Brunner and Tiptree were building foundations and roads - but it took Gibson to pull things together in a while with its own coherence. He could have gone in different directions and ended up being a softer-sf Stephen Baxter.

I should reread the Budayeen stories soon.