What are you reading in 2026?

[prabe]

Read The Everlasting by Alix E Harrow, the only one of this year's Hugo novel nominations I hadn't read, and it's a doozy. I think I may have to change my preference from Death of the Author to this one. Which is a slight pity, because The Everlasting is a much more traditional fantasy novel in a way, cleanly and beautifully written, but it's also very impressive.

Owen Mallory is a historian who desperately seeks to belong in Dominion, a country not unlike Britain just after WW1. He has devoted much of his life to the study of Sir Una Everlasting, a heroine who is central to the creation myth of Dominion. And so when he's sent back in time a couple of thousand years to meet Una and guide her to her death, he's overjoyed and conflicted. And it only gets more complicated from there.

Much of the story is about how history is a pile of accidents, and it doesn't tell a story until you make it do so. And who is free, who loves another?

The Everlasting is a fricking astounding novel. The setting might be kinda conventional--at least at first--but I figure the ... nature of the narrative (avoiding spoilers, here) and the novel's themes (which include the accidental nature of history, as you say) are not entirely mainline for fantasy; but, I don't read a lot of fantasy, so my sense of the genre might be wrong.

Also, Harrow's other novels are also all well within range of this one, quality-wise, if you haven't read them.

 

[jian]

The Everlasting is a fricking astounding novel. The setting might be kinda conventional--at least at first--but I figure the ... nature of the narrative (avoiding spoilers, here) and the novel's themes (which include the accidental nature of history, as you say) are not entirely mainline for fantasy; but, I don't read a lot of fantasy, so my sense of the genre might be wrong.

Also, Harrow's other novels are also all well within range of this one, quality-wise, if you haven't read them.

Yes, it certainly looks as if The Once and Future Witches, for instance, has some similar ideas. I’m on the waiting list for it at the library.

 

[prabe]

Yes, it certainly looks as if The Once and Future Witches, for instance, has some similar ideas. I’m on the waiting list for it at the library.

That was probably my favorite of hers, before I read The Everlasting. If memory serves, it's angrier. It also has my favorite marriage proposal from any novel in it--there's just the one, you'll know it when you see it.

 

[jian]

Thanks to my Libby access, I also just read (re-read? Not sure if I read all of these back in the day) the X-men Masterworks 10-11, which are basically early 80s and peak Claremont with art mostly by John Romita Jr (with some obvious exceptions). These include three classic stories from the period that I remember reading a little after they came out:

• Lifedeath: The psychodrama where Storm loses her powers, falls in love with a techbro called Forge, and (dun dun dun) discovers that Forge made the gun that depowered her. This is dramatic enough but for some reason Claremont thought having an invasion of Dire Wraiths would be a great addition. Forge in his introduction is quite different from his modern version, and is in fact an archetypal techbro who wants to care but honestly mostly doesn't, who deliberately lives in a glass tower full of holograms of his past away from the real world. Wonderful art by Barry Windsor-Smith.
• An Age Undreamt Of: A random magical necklace allows Kulan Gath, a long-dead Conan-era sorcerer, to turn Manhattan into the Hyborian Age, complete with swords and sorcery versions of all your favourite characters. Shorter than I remember (only a couple of issues) and really quite brutal, as befits the Conan era. Lots of slavery, skimpy outfits, character deaths, and body horror. Claremont really showing off his many fetishes, but also a fantastic and very compact story.
• Asgardian Wars: The first storyline from this series - the X-Men and Alpha Flight team up to investigate a lost plane in the Arctic, and find that Loki (of all people) is offering what appears to be an impossibly rich blessing to all mankind. A really impressive story with a lot to say about the nature of humanity, magic, and creativity; it really says a lot about Shaman that he's willing to die painfully so that humanity can thrive. Paul Smith's art is just right, austere but emotive. There are a couple of follow-up stories (drawn by the inestimable Art Adams) but they're really about Loki taking his revenge for the first story.

It's really interesting to see Claremont's writing style because I realise I've derived a lot of my GMing style from it. He seeds a lot of random plot elements and sideplots in the background - sometimes they come to something, sometimes they don't, but it keeps the setting interesting and distracting, and always gives him something to work with.

 

[Starelf555]

I'm starting the first of a five-part novel series by Jonathan Maberry, set in a zombie apocalypse. This first novel is called Rot & Ruin, and it deals with a teenaged boy going into the family business: zombie pest control, basically. I bought the whole five-novel set, and I'll be on a business trip next week so I'll be bringing the next couple with me to give me somthing to read in the airports, on the planes, and in the hotel room. But Maberry's a known author whose other works (the "Joe Ledger" series) I've really enjoyed, so I'm sure I'll like these a lot.

Johnathan

If you haven't come across them already, I also highly recommend his "Pine Deep" series, which is set in a small Pennsylvania town that bills itself as "The Spookiest Town In America" as a tourist draw. Unfortunately for the townspeople, though, it turns out that the description is far, FAR more accurate than any of them ever knew.

 

[Starelf555]

I've actually worked my way through all but two of the nineteen novels & two short-story collections of Mercedes Lackey's "Elemental Masters" series.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I've actually worked my way through all but two of the nineteen novels & two short-story collections of Mercedes Lackey's "Elemental Masters" series.

That has crossed my mind as a project. but sadly I doubt will happen in my lifetime.

 

[Richards]

This week was my quarterly week-long business trip, so I got a lot of reading done in airports, on planes, and in my hotel room at night. Here's what I read:

Destroyer #121: A Pound of Prevention and Destroyer #124: By Eminent Domain. Two Remo Williams novels, because they're light reading and I still enjoy them, all these decades later. Long live the Glorious House of Sinanju!

The Grave Artist by Jeffery Deaver and Isabella Maldonado, the second novel in a new series starring a Homeland Security Investigator and an "intrusion specialist," this time working together to bring down a new type of serial killer: one who likes killing one member (bride or groom, but not both) of the wedding party on their wedding day, specifically because he sees himself as an artist in the medium of overwhelming grief. It was a good read, with several nice (and logical) twists - one of Deaver's particular specialties.

And those were the only three books I brought with me, and since I ate through the first two in the first two days and the third lasted me all of two days, I knew I needed a new book to occupy my time on Friday, so I hit the local bookstore Thursday night, looking for a good read. Since none of my regular authors had anything new out, I ended up picking up something I've heard a lot of people (on these boards and elsewhere) recommend, Dungeon Crawler Cal by Matt Dinniman. It's got an interesting premise, but I'm halfway through it and while there have been some really entertaining bits, I don't think it'll hold my interest beyond this first novel. (There are already half a dozen more books in the series.) My son's interested in reading it when I'm done, so I'll pass it his way and maybe he'll like it enough to hunt up the sequels.

Johnathan

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Welp. Halfway through Dungeon Crawler Carl, and I'm enjoying it.

 

[prabe]

Read Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler, which is a fascinating eye-opener (and if you needed one of those, the Fatherland was just the place for you) of a book. From the extremely common and initially legal use of morphine, cocaine, and methamphetamine (the latter usually marketed as Pervitin, especially to front line troops, but also available as chocolates for the worn out hausfrau) to the extraordinary concoctions delivered hourly to the Fuhrer by Theodor Morell, his personal quack, I think it’s fair to say that the Nazis couldn’t have functioned without massive and frequent drug use.

This was particularly true of Hitler, whom Ohler wryly notes was mostly technically a vegetarian but really wasn’t if you consider the quantities of animal organ extracts with which Morell injected him (as well as meth, heroin, cocaine, and oxycodone, among other things). This of course contributed greatly to Hitler’s increasingly erratic behaviour and mental and physical decline from 1941 onwards. I am strongly reminded of the likely need for regular stimulant and sedative medication (gradually less effective as time goes on, resulting in longer and longer refractory periods between public appearances and extremely noticeable erratic behaviour and decline) that at least one modern head of state is currently exhibiting. I think the modern drugs of choice are Adderall and alprazolam; we’ve come a long way, pharmacologically speaking, in the last 80 years.

Just read this, and I wanted to thank you and @Autumnal for bringing it to my attention and making it sound worth reading.