I really don’t know what to make of this manga. The Gay Who Turned Kaiju is the type of book where it makes a single really big choice, and how a reader responds to that choice is going to define their experience with the entire book. The story walks a tightrope between important (and uncomfortable) themes and wantonness. I can’t figure out which side it falls on. If protagonists committing sexual assault is a hard no for you, then avoid this one.
Talking about books with kids is one of the best parts of my job. Unlike most adults, they’ll gush about their favorites unabashedly and rip books they disliked to pieces. This means that I get a pretty good pulse on what books are worth a look – though my tastes don’t always line up with the kids. Lunar Boy is one of those books that kept coming up as phenomenal. Since nobody was reading it, I took my classroom copy home to read as a way to kick off my Spring Break. The kids were right; it’s good.
Read If Looking For: immigrant narratives, a focus on inner conflict, familial struggles & triumphs, adorable pen pals
Avoid If Looking For: hard sci fi, adult fiction (this is very middle grade, with all the tropes and idiosyncrasies that come with that label), books that ask difficult questions
Comparable Media: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, A Song for You & I, Root Magic
Continue reading “Lunar Boy – Isolation and Identity in Middle Grade Comics”I finally got around to reading the third – and final – novel in the Riverside series. While it is a sequel, they can really be read in any order or can stand alone just fine. In this entry, we trade swordplay for academic debate. Other than the shift from sword to pen however, the structural DNA of The Fall of Kings fits with its predecessors. Expect gorgeous prose, political intrigue, problematic queer leads, and lots of guys cheating on their wives.
Read If Looking For: the cluttered posturing of university professors, morally and emotionally dubious characters, slow pacing, the importance of idle gossip
Avoid If Looking For: fleshed out female characters, the swordfights of earlier Riverside books, a book where you understand how the magic works
Comparable Media: Greenwode, The Goblin Emperor, Downton Abbey
Continue reading “The Fall of Kings – Political Intrigue in Medieval Academia”Another April, another bingo! Compared to last year, I’m feeling a lot more upbeat about reading. Stressed about money (if you’re American, I assume I’m not alone on this), but it’s looking possible that I might hit 200 books read in a year for the first time ever. I’ve been sitting on a lot of books waiting for April 1 to roll around, and now I get to dive in!
For those unfamiliar, r/Fantasy’s Bingo is simple. Over the course of a single year, you are challenged to read books meeting 25 prompts. You can’t repeat authors, and you only get 1 reread. That’s … pretty much it to be honest. To learn more about bingo, here is the official post for this year’s bingo card.
Continue reading “2026 Bingo First Impressions”I grew up loving Greek Mythology and imagining that half the characters in the books I read were actually gay. I would have loved An Inexplicable Act of Doom, and wish more books like this had been published when I was a kid. While written with kids in mind, I think adults looking for a more low-key reading experience will enjoy it a lot as well. Plus who doesn’t love a sweet romance between a god of your inevitable and unexpected doom with a guy who’s supposed to perish horribly while flying through the air on mechanical wings?
Read if Looking For: harmless bickering, Greek Gods as narcissistic assholes, cozy adventures, witch Aunties who give great advice
Avoid if Looking For: typo-free books, positive depictions of Theseus, nuanced or complex themes & characters
Disclosure: I was asked to be an ARC reader for this book in exchange for an honest review, though I think this was closer to a final Beta-Read than a true ARC. I did also request that Cavehill would donate a single copy of the physical book to my classroom library for my students to read. I think they’ll quite enjoy it.
Continue reading “An Inexplicable Act of Doom – Percy Jackson, but Make it Gay”Overall March was a solid month of reading (20 books!), including some real highlights of the year. We’ll see how I feel about them in a few months, but Drome, Beyond Redemption, and The Memory of the Ogisi are all on my shortlist for favorite books of the year. Mostly, I’m staring down April 1st with a small army of achillean novels I’ve been holding off on reading until the r/fantasy Bingo challenge resets. More on that tomorrow!
I don’t do many rereads, but when I saw the audiobook for Hench was available without a wait time, I couldn’t resist checking it out. Villain, the sequel, releases later this year, and I will definitely be putting it on my reading list. I think I’m a little more hesitant about some of the thematic work in Hench than I was during my first read, but this is a rock solid revenge story that stands out in a cluttered Superhero landscape.
Read If: clever characters work for you, unreliable narrators are a plus, you think iguanas deserve only the best
Avoid If: you dislike critiques of policing, body horror makes you squeamish, you demand nuanced and thorough themes
Comparable Media: The Boys, Watchmen, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself
Continue reading “Hench – Revenge is Best Served With Excel Spreadsheets”The prairies of the American Midwest and West have always been special to me. I grew up in a rural farming community in Kansas, a place where thunderstorms and tornadoes were both pedestrian and awe-inspiring. Much of the land I grew up on gets a bad reputation for being flat, but nothing makes you feel smaller than sitting in a vast ocean of corn staring up at the night sky. Living further north (and in a major city), I miss the stars, the silence, and the swaths of empty space from the prairie.
Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie is a deep exploration. It begins by tracing the history of the prairie at a large scale: from its importance to indigenous communities to the current cash crop craze of corn and soybeans. Following that, it devotes time to specific topics: insects, soil, nitrogen, bison, etc. It shifts between testimonials, scientific research, and case studies as it makes its case for the ecological and societal importance of the great American prairies.
Continue reading “Sea of Grass – A Foray into Nonfiction”How have I never read an Ilona Andrews book before? Why have I delayed long on picking up one of their books? Where can I find more? These are the questions running through my head as I type this. It is 11:00 pm on a Sunday night. Tomorrow morning my dog will wake me up at 5:30 for a morning walk before I try and get a quick gym workout in, followed by the daily onslaught of questions that comes with teaching 11 year olds. My bedtime was an hour and a half ago, and I probably won’t fall asleep until midnight.
The Inheritance touched something inside me. Not anything particularly deep or meaningful. No, this book touched the ‘holy shit that was so much fun’ part of my brain, which is a part of my reading life that’s been a bit neglected recently. I want more, and I want it now. The rest of the series has not yet been published, which is a grave injustice for which I have no remedy.
Read If: you want popcorn fantasy with a middle-aged mother in focus, badass German Shepherds sounds appealing,
Avoid If: overly tragic backstories piss you off, you want characters to slowly grow in power and skill, you’ve got a phobia of bugs and spiders
Comparable Media: Solo Levelling, Mage Errant, Dungeon Crawler Carl
Continue reading “The Inheritance – My New Addiction”Drome is probably the platonic ideal of comics for me. It was adrenaline injected directly into my brain. I couldn’t stop thinking about it when I tried opening up my current novel. I had meant to spread this read out over five days – the book is split into five sections. Instead I finished it in a single day that was also filled with book club, yard work, and a friend’s Irish folk music concert. While Drome doesn’t quite top the emotional resonance of The Magic Fish, it captures so many of the things I love in Fantasy and Comics. It honors mythology without being a pale imitation, it leverages simplicity for power, and it uses its visual medium as an asset to be leveraged. Drome is on a lot of ‘Best of 2025’ lists in the comic world, and it’s clear why.
For those of you who don’t read many comics, I cannot stress enough that Drome is absolutely worth checking your public library for. Unlike many of my favorite comics, this one doesn’t have the same density, making it a very low time commitment for those who don’t spend much time with comics.
Read If: you love reading about mythological heroes, enjoy visual experimentation, want a grand story that can be read in a single sitting
Avoid If: simple and predictable plots annoy you, you need a simple happy ending, lack of dialogue will hinder your enjoyment of a comic
Comparable Media: Tongues, The Spear Cuts Through Water, Hyperion
Continue reading “Drome – A Modern Ode to Mythic Hero Stories”
Marked for Plot 