What are you reading in 2026?

I started back into reading novels and short stories on my kindle again. I finished Legends of the Space Marines, a 40K anthology series of short stories. It fit well with my current recreational reading attention span and my surface level knowledge of 40K. I enjoyed it enough that I queued up another 40K anthology in my kindle queue to add to the rotation of unfinished books in there that I am reading now (an H.R. Rider Haggard novel, a book on Norse Mythology, the Ben Thompson Badass Monsters book, and the Call of Cthulhu RPG adventure Horror on the Orient Express). I generally read a chapter from one at a time then move onto another of that bunch instead of plowing though multiple chapters of a book straight when I sit down to read for an hour or so.

I played a bunch of Warhammer RPG 1e in the 80s but have never played the skirmish, RPG, or computer 40K games but I have a decent surface level knowledge of 40K, the grimdark satiricial future empire of humanity constantly at war with xenos, heretics, and Chaos. I know a little bit about the factions, the fantastic orks, tyrannids, eldar, Chaos daemons, Chaos Space marines, and such and that there are different space marine orders, though I could not tell you the difference between blood angels and ultramarines. The whole Catholic space nazis with their own inquisition are the best good guys is dark satire similar to Judge Dredd's protagonist fascism, that Orks are space soccer hooligans with cool lore on being fungal bioweapons out of control and stupid psychic powers based on their belief in rule of cool (red goes faster, more daka, etc.). I had read a few 40k novels (the first two Horus Heresy novels when they came out, and more recently an anthology of Chaos Space Marine stories), but not a lot. I have gotten a bunch of 40K RPG books from bundle deals but have not delved into them. I have incorporated some 40K stuff into my D&D games such as Ork thematics and space marine thematics for my sci-fi in D&D Iron Gods campaign, or the four big thematic powers of Chaos as Demon Lords in my games.

An anthology of short one shot stories was a great match up for my knowledge and interest. Even though there were a bunch of stories focused on space marine chapters I had never heard of before (a jungle dinosaur themed one with exaggerated berserker kill your allies rage issues?) it was easy to follow and had a bunch of neat things like a fun first narrative view for me of the inside of a Tyrannid ship.
 
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I shotgunned the Sprawl trilogy back to back to back, thanks to you lot rousing my curiosity about how I’d feel about it now. Short form: just as pleased as ever. The shift in narrative style from Neuromancer to Count Zero is great. Mona Lisa Overdrive seems draggy at the start - too long to get the point where it feels to me like these threads are going to converge. But the second half is pretty great. It’s have been nic to actually see Case as well as hear about him, and it’d have been nice to have a glimpse of Turner. But these are nits. I’m satisfied.

The Warhammer Crime line is great for 40K fiction. All the stories are set on a single world far from any front lines. There both anthologies and novels, with a mix of one-off and recurring characters, and they’re very enjoyable.
 

I just finished Scales of Justice by Ngaio Marsh for a bookclub/podcast thing i do and man do I not get the appeal of the British Mystery Novel.
I love them, but couldn't tell you why. It's a world I'll never know, as foreign as Faerûn, and in some ways more wondrous. People being generally kind to each other, except of course for well, the murder.

And then the murderer caught, all wrapped up in Hercule's or Roderick's or Marple's bow. Neat and tidy, with no muss nor fuss, because after all what would people say?
 

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