Like so many people, I am an ardent Dungeon Crawler Carl fan. I hopped on the bandwagon just as it was taking off, and I’ve been overjoyed that it has prompted publishers to take a hard look at supporting more self-published authors. This is Book 8 in the series, which means you should probably skip this if you’re trying to figure out if the series is good for you (a shortish review of book 1 can be found here).
Read If Looking For: More Dungeon Crawler Carl, increasingly unstable Artificial Intelligence, crawlers getting whittled down to near nothing
Avoid If Looking For: new achievements, leaderboard updates, lootbox openings
It’s unsurprising that the AIDS epidemic has been notably absent from Fantasy and Science fiction novels. There are lots of reasons for this: many read for escapism, the 80s/90s isn’t a common time period for fantasy or science fiction in general, and AIDS doesn’t fit neatly into the cute love story narrative that traditional publishers have historically leaned on when writing books about gay men. Things are improving – traditionally published trans protagonists exist, though they’re still rare – and there are a few novels that have tackled the idea (though I couldn’t bring myself to keep reading the train wreck that was Disco Witches of Fire Island). I live in hope, but my hopes aren’t very high.
Comics have actually done a much better job of engaging with the topic, though not always well. I got to teach a few lessons on the representation of AIDS in superhero comics a few years ago, and I’m hoping I’ll have the chance to expand it into a full unit soon. Barbalien was part of that journey, and a great example of how mainstream comics have evolved on the issue over 30 years. Barbalien is set in the The World of Black Hammer, a superheroverse more or less analogous to DC or Marvel. You really don’t need any previous context for the story, so don’t feel like you need to jump in ‘at the start’ if you aren’t interested in the cute and satirical set of villain interviews that form the universe’s first installment. Barbalien is a more serious story, but not so bleak as to suffer accusations of torture porn.
Finally, it’s important to note that while Jeff Lemire seems to be listed as the main author, the story is a collaboration between him and Tate Brombal. The actual script (dialogue, panel by panel story descriptions, etc) is all Brombal, an openly gay comic writer.
Read If Looking For: queer joy, queer pain, and queer love
Avoid If Looking For: sympathetic cops, cinematic fight scenes, fleshed out supporting characters
I’ve been feeling like 2026 is going to be a very good year for books featuring queer men. The Iron Garden Sutra is my first of the lot, and I enjoyed it a lot! The book has a bit of a weak opening 100 pages, but once it hit its stride I loved it. Unconventional Gothic settings have been growing more and more on me, and this book did a great job of blending a tense atmosphere with the portrait of a man facing an existential crisis. Kind of feels like a darker, more serious Becky Chambers book. It’s not going to be for everyone, but it sure was for me.
Read If Looking For: haunted spaceships, characters coming to terms with death and mortality, explorations of autonomy and personhood, the crumbling of religious conviction
Avoid If Looking For: flawless prose, logical worldbuilding, characters who can put the pieces of the puzzle together
Comparable Media: A Psalm for the Wild Built, Mexican Gothic, A Botanical Daughter
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
I was first (and second) introduced to Yoon Ha Lee through school. His Korean middle grade space opera Dragon Pearl was quite popular for a few years running, and I use some of his short stories from the fairy tale-esque anthology The Fox’s Tower and Other Tales as part of my high school Genre Fiction class. Unfortunately, I didn’t like Ninefox Gambit very much. Lee is a phenomenal worldbuilder who avoids the need to explain every element of the world. In a military-action story however, that choice doesn’t work quite as well. If you’re looking for something weird and trans-coded, this might be for you. Sadly, it wasn’t for me.
Read if Looking for: calendar magic, military commanders making tough decisions, sieges, sentient robots building their own culture, creepy shadows with nine eyes
Avoid if Looking for: familiar Space Opera ideas, clear space combat sequences, strong characterization
I meant to read this book ages ago, but my dad (who never reads) picked it up off my bookshelf while visiting and took it back to Kansas. I finally resigned myself to not getting it back and grabbed another from a used bookstore. I’ve only read one other book from Tchaikovsky, and this confirmed that I like his books a lot, but they’re probably only for when I’m in the mood for something on the more breezy/readable end of things.
Read if Looking For: so many spiders, batshit crazy worldbuilding, spaceship politics
Avoid if Looking For: inhuman narration, stories focusing on first contact, messy thematic work
This was meant to be a book I read when I was on the treadmill, taking a break from curriculum writing, or when I couldn’t fall asleep. The type of story it didn’t matter much if I drifted in and out of. I was reading it on my cell phone, not even a damned e-reader. Striker V gripped me in the early chapters and didn’t let me go for a good long while. This novel examines Superheroes from a more person-first perspective than the standard, caring just as much about how humans would react to the constant violence of superhero activity as the fights themselves. It didn’t quite stick the landing, and I have some issues with the resolution of the story. However, it did things I haven’t seen much in superhero stories, and those bits felt just as interesting as The Watchmen.
Read if Looking For: mental health struggles, governmental bureaucracy (and sometimes humor), dystopian superheroes, happy endings
Avoid if Looking For: nuanced climaxes to nuanced conflicts, creative superhero powers, villains that make sense, tonal consistency
When I explored the idea of using comics in an Ethics class I’m putting together for high schoolers, The Power Fantasy was one of the most-recommended titles. It’s easy to see why, as the whole series is one big thought experiment on whether people with extreme superpowers can exist ethically (notice I said exist, not behave). It’s also got a clear thematic lineage with Watchmen, taking the superhero deconstruction presented by Moore in directions that feel much more 2025. Ultimately, I don’t think it’s quite straightforward enough for me to want to use as a whole-class read with high schoolers, it’s great for anyone looking for something to chew on.
Read if Looking For: ensemble cast of morally dubious supers, cigars that defy gravity, non-sequential storytelling
Avoid if Looking For: authors who hold your hand, heroes vs villains storylines, dramatic fight scenes
Watchmen has been touted as one of the best comics to come out of all time. Historically, many such novels lauded as ‘all time bests’ in the fantasy and science fiction genres have not lived up to the hype for me. Watchmen however, feels like the real deal. It’s dark and gritty, a take on superheroes that feels more nuanced than other deconstructions of superhero stories I’ve seen (such as Hench, Steelheart, or The Boys, all of which I very much enjoyed). It’s tough to read in a lot of places, and not a story I was interested in binge-reading. However, the juice was absolutely worth the squeeze, and I think it has a lot of important things to say about America and its fascination with superheroes.
Read if Looking For: layers of theme, episodic chapters, cold war stories, low powered supers (mostly), comics that get studied at colleges, epistolary comics
Avoid if Looking For: mindless fun, protagonists who are good people, books free of sexism and homophobia, diverse protagonists
Going to sleep is probably one of my favorite things in the world; that said, I also feel like I’m constantly craving just a few more hours in the day. The Sleepless by Victor Manibo tackles the premise of what a world without sleep might look like, wrapped up in a cyberpunk-noir trenchcoat. I appreciated a lot about this book, and it surpassed my expectations knowing that this book both grew out of NanoWrimo and also is written by an author whose later work I have DNF’d. It’s a solid read, especially for people interested in exploring how a Cyberpunk society might come to be.
Read if Looking for: near-future cyberpunk, greedy CEOs, chaos bisexual best friends, jacked drug dealers
Avoid if Looking for: scientific rigor, happy endings, multidimensional side characters, romance plotlines
Marked for Plot 