Drowned Country – Atmospheric and Moody

Reading sequels is something that I used to do all the time, but has really fallen off the more and more I read. Ironically, aiming for 200 books this year has made me more aware of all the things I’ll never have time to read, which makes picking up a sequel a pretty big deal for me. Even knowing this about myself, it was a surprise when I realized I hadn’t ever finished the Greenhollow Duology. They’re short novellas, and while Silver in the Wood wasn’t perfect, I also loved my time with it. Drowned Country is a straightforward improvement in my mind, though it didn’t address some of my core problems I encountered with Silver.

You can read my review of Silver in the Wood here.

The Premise:
Several years after Silver adopted the mantle of the wood and Tobias departed, he is summoned by his mother to help find a missing girl. What should have been a straightforward Vampire Hunt shifts as the trio realizes that the girl in question won’t take no for an answer when it comes to mixing with unnatural forces. Through this, Silver confronts his immediate and distant past, and his present moment with Tobias.

Read If Looking For: dark folklore vibes, faeries that feel truly evil, introspection, meddling mothers

Avoid If Looking For: believable romantic connections, dynamic plots, firm answers on how everything works

Lord of the White Hell -When your Roommate is Cute, Cocky, & Cursed

Ginn Hale is one of the more prolific authors of gay Fantasy out there. My experience with her work has generally been positive, but never gushing. I took a trip back to 2010 to read a book that would have come out when I was still in high school, and I think I’ve finally found the book that teenage me would have absolutely adored. As an adult, I see some issues with it, but this is the book that finally got me to understand why so many are riveted by Hale’s writing. This book had Tamora Pierce vibes if Pierce were more interested in the romance plotlines than the knight and mage elements.

The Premise:
Kiram has travelled across borders to become the first of his people to study at Sagrada Academy. He’s a prodigious mechanist, but school isn’t quite what he expects. He ends up falling in with his roommate Javier, a lord possessed of a powerful curse that his peers believe means he’s lost his soul to hell. The man is also overtly flirty, so much so that it can’t possibly be a reality in such a homophobic society. However, this is just as much a romance as a school story, so of course they begin to fall in love.

Read If Looking For: teenage angst written well, slice of life military school stories, crow witches

Avoid If Looking For: classroom instruction, deep political maneuvering, completely healthy relationship dynamics

Comparable Media: Protector of the Small, Carry On, A Taste of Gold and Iron

Kyn – An Action Packed Cyberpunk Adventure

Cyberpunk is an interesting genre to me. It’s this weird mashup of insane ideas, tightly focused critiques of our world, and intense action scenes. My experiences with it are mostly with television and TTRPGs, and the books I’ve read have been a bit more theme heavy. Kyn swings hard in the opposite direction, and I had a ton of fun with it as a book that didn’t require too much dedicated focus as I crawl to the end of a school year.

The Premise
Kyn is an Envoy. He is a killer who serves at the whims of the Sentry, who rule the city from their towers and media conglomerates. He is one of the few who survived the ordeals children are forced through, which has graced him with the ability to heal from any wound. Kyn’s handlers begin to reign in his rebellious behavior as he tries to maintain a relationship with his hacker boyfriend (whom he’s pretty sure works for a freelance information broker), and terrorist attacks threaten the Sentry’s reign. Kyn is on a short leash, and he’ll kill for his owners. You can bet that he’ll take his pound of flesh from them at any opportunity, however.

Read If Looking For: extended combat sequences, capitalism at its worst, vibrant and bleak worldbuilding

Avoid If Looking For: tight editing and proofreading, deep character arcs, books likely to get a sequel written

Comparable Media: Assassins Creed, The Effaced, Ajin

r/Fantasy’s 2026 Pride Celebration

Happy nearly Pride Month!!!

I wanted to take a second to share something exciting happening over at r/fantasy next month. I’m one of the folks who runs the Beyond Binaries Book Club, which focuses on queer speculative fiction. We’re super jazzed to host the third annual pride festivities on r/fantasy, and I figured I’d hype it here for those who are interested.. There will be discussions, book recommendations, and a book club of Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman.

Most excitingly (for me), is an author panel on June 19th where Victoria Goddard, Margaret Killjoy, Alexandra Rowland, Azalea Crowley, and Trung Le Nguyen will be answering questions about their books, their process, and their inspirations.

Pride Month Calendar

2nd of June (Tue): Non-Western Settings
4th of June (Thur): Queer Retellings
8th of June (Mon): Great Big Rec Thread
11th of June (Thur): Bookclub Midpoint Discussion: Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman
16th of June (Tue): Finding Hidden Gems
19th of June (Fri): Panel AMA
22nd of June (Mon): Achillean/Sapphic Fiction
25th of June (Thur): Bookclub Final Discussion: Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman
26th of June (Fri): Intersectionality
30th of June (Tue): Reflection & Wrap-Up

You can find our official announcement post here, which will also have links to the various discussions as they get posted.

Happy Reading and Happy Pride everyone!

May Reading Roundup

I’m not sure why, but May felt like walking through molasses. The school year is ending, yes, with all the joys and busywork that brings. However, I found myself having to hype myself up to read, even in books I was tremendously enjoying. Add some procrastination on house projects, and I had a spectacularly unproductive month. However, what May lacked in quantity, it more than made up for in quality of reads. I have almost no regrets in how I spent my reading time this month, other than wishing I’d have been able to squeeze another book or two in. The good news? The last week saw a lot more movement and motivation, so things are looking good heading into summer break.

Life is about to get extremely exciting. I’m helping run the Pride month festivities over on r/fantasy (more details to come, but I’m super excited for the author panel), students earned the ability to cut my hair (pray for me), my dad is celebrating his 70th birthday, I’m going to spend a week doing nothing in Kansas under a blanket of stars, and I’m going to learn how to replace dry rot on window trim! For now, however, here’s how my month in reading went before I dash off to grad parties for my homeroom students!

Let’s dive into some books!

Nine-Tenths – Exploring the Complexity of Draconic Love

This book was a pressure cooker, and I’m so happy I read it. I’m slowly realizing that the romances that I love are the ones that take things seriously, instead of going on autopilot. Whimsical and campy romance is great, but I don’t typically have very much interesting to say about them, whereas this might be my longest review of 2026. There was so much that delighted me here, that pushed me to rethink what romance books could accomplish. It also fell into some really basic pitfalls that annoy me, and the ending was sloppy. I think its absolutely worth a look for anyone interested in a serious take on interspecies romance, but if solving systemic issues with a single conversation annoys you, be on guard.

The Premise:
Colin is a barista who is listlessly wandering through life and depression. One of the only perks is the hot and slightly creepy guy who has watched him while drinking coffee for the last two years – Colin has reciprocated those looks. When it turns out that Dav is actually a dragon, the coffee roaster gets melted with dragonife, and Dav volunteers to help out after paying for a new roaster to be shipped in, their romance kicks into high gear. However, relationships to dragons mean something very different than to humans, and that means the duo has a lot to work through.

Read If Looking For: protagonists to have tough conversations and return to them, a peek into draconic psychology, defeating the brain weasels, badass Lesbian aunts

Avoid If you Dislike: miscommunication, unscientific evolutionary biology, easy endings, coffeeshop romances, stuffy British formalities

Comparable Media: Dawn, Looking for Group, Heart of Stone

Call And Response – An Anthology of Duets

Call and Response is a fairly new anthology of short stories by Christopher Caldwell built around a delightful premise: what if each story comes in a pair? In Call, Caldwell introduces characters and worlds, only to return to them in Response. Sometimes these appearances are small cameos, other times they are directs sequels. Call and Response is unapologetically black and queer, with several stories sneaking semi-autobiographical details into the fantastic. This collection won’t satisfy those seeking the tight research of Ted Chiang or the experimental forms of Isabel Kim. However, Caldwell’s stories are candid, intense, and thoughtful. I’d love to see what he can do with a full novel.

Read If Looking For: stories of black resilience and rebellion, diverse representations of queerness, aquatic motifs

Avoid If Looking For: experiments in form or structure, answers to broken systems, unambiguous endings

Comparable Media: Convergence Problems, The Fox Roads, Ivy Angelica Bay

This Kingdom will Not Kill Me – Romantasy done Right

Earlier this year I read The Inheritance by Ilona Andrews and quickly swore to read more of her work. Her other new release is This Kingdom WIll Not Kill Me, which has been getting more mainstream buzz, likely because it is Andrews first book put out by one of the major publishers (I think it’s their first … this duo has written a lot of books). I had some reservations about this book at first, but I really like how Andrews straddles classic fantasy storytelling conventions with a heavier romance focus. This novel felt a lot like Romantasy written for fantasy fans, whereas much of the Romantasy market seems targeted at Romance fans. As someone who loves both styles of writing (and also Romance and Fantasy when isolated from each other), this felt fresh compared to a lot of what’s coming out right now.

The Premise
In classic Isekai fashion, Maggie wakes up to find herself stranded in the world of her favorite novels. Rellas is a cutthroat world about to be put into the hands of a brutal tyrant.Without knowing how long she’s going to be stuck here, she’d like to avoid that fate from coming to pass. She leverages her encyclopedic knowledge of this world and its major characters to pass herself as an information broker, getting herself involved with assassins, swordmasters, and aristocrats. Oh, it also turns out she can’t die, though that doesn’t prevent her from experience pain when people stab her.

Read If Looking For: a balance of romance and political intrigue, quick pacing, competent protagonists, indulgent use of tropes

Avoid If Looking For: instalove, protagonists who gain massive power, books that primarily live in ‘show’ instead of ‘tell’

Comparable Media: Inkheart, Rook and Rose

The Many Deaths of Laila Starr – Vignettes on Death

This book has been sitting on my desk as a potential whole-class read for high school level comics classes. It’s award-nominated and generally has a phenomenal reputation. At 128 pages, this story is absolutely worth a look if you’re in the mood for something contemplative with some light humor elements. It feels very much like an Autumn book, in that it asks readers to think about their own relationship with death, but it remains pretty accessible throughout. Plus, it’s popular enough that you can likely nab a copy from your local library!

The Premise:
A child destined to discover immortality is born, and with it comes layoffs. Death finds herself without work, trapped in a human body and the pesky mortality that comes with it. This comic covers her many lives (she gets brought back by her companion Life often) as she comes into contact with the child (and later teen, adult, and elderly man) who caused her downfall.

Read If Looking For: a god experiencing mortality, episodic story structures, casual cigarettes, quiet storytelling with vibrant colors

Avoid If Looking For: the political machinations of gods, experimental art, novel and original endings

Comparable Media: Cloud Atlas, Sandman. I’ve also heard that it pairs delightfully with Daytripper and Karmen, both of which I’m intent on reading soon.

The Daily Grind – When Corporate America becomes the Dungeon

After Works of Vermin, I wanted something light and simple. The Daily Grind has been on my Progression Fantasy radar for a while, and it felt like a great book to read while mildly burnt out and stressed about dry rot on windows. It absolutely scratched that itch, and I’m definitely going to keep reading more of this series as a palette cleanser between heavier reads. Is this book going to satisfy anyone’s desire for carefully wrought stories brimming with meaning and subtext? Absolutely not. But for a casual fun trip into an eldritch dimension watching normal people fight animated post it notes, this is a great pick. It has big beach read vibes despite most of the book happening in an unending void of cubicles.

The Premise:
James hates his job. To be fair, who would enjoy vague IT support where you get yelled at because the customer lost their remote and can’t change the channel anymore. On his way out one night, he discovers a staircase turns into an alternate dimension for a few minutes – though time works differently on the inside. The endless rows of cubicles seem to be randomly generated by some eldritch mind, and the maze is filled with stapler crabs, computers with jaws in strange places, and bills that come in far more denominations than you can find in the real world. When he learns that killing monsters drop skill orbs (typically for stuff like Excel Spreadsheets or French History) he quickly grows addicted to delving in this bizarre dungeon.

Read If Looking For: something simple, repetitive, and chill, casual bisexual representation, uncanny valley office supplies

Avoid If Looking For: dramatic power-ups, careful prose, epic fight scenes

Comparable Media: Several People are Typing, Mana Mirror, Triangle Agency