Clare

It's a zombie apocalypse, only instead of zombies, there's cats.



In a future in which 90% of the population owned a cat, a strange virus spreads. If you cuddle a cat, or a cat nuzzles you, you turn into a cat! It's a catastrophe! A catlamity! A nyandemic!





Not only are cats everywhere, but the cats are either instinctively trying to turn humans into cats, or they just want to be petted. Cue every zombie movie scene ever, but with cats. Cats scratch at the doors! Cats peer through the windows! Groups of cats ambush you in tunnels!

The characters are all very upset by this, because they love cats! And now there's cats everywhere, just begging to be skritched! And they can't skritch them! "We can't even squish their little toe beans!" The horror!

Needless to say, they would never ever harm a cat. In fact they feel bad when they're forced to spray cats with water to shoo them away.

I'm not sure how this can possibly be sustained for seven volumes, but on the other hand I could happily read seven volumes of it. The cat art is really fun and adorable. I would definitely do better in a zombie apocalypse than a cat apocalypse, because I would never be able to resist those cats.

Content notes: None, the cats are fine.

This is a difficult book to review as almost all of the plot is technically spoilery, but you can also figure out a lot of it from about page three. I'll synopsize the first two chapters here. We follow two storylines, both set in an alternate England where Hitler was assassinated in 1943 and England made peace with Germany.

In one storyline, a young girl named Nancy lives an isolated life with her parents. In the other, which gets much more page time, three identical young boys are raised by three "mothers," in a home in extremely weird circumstances. They rarely see the outside world, they're often sick and take medicine, their dreams are meticulously recorded by the "mothers," and all their schooling comes from a set of weird encyclopedias that supposedly contain all the knowledge in the world, which are also the only books they have access to. There used to be 40 boys, but when they recover from their mysterious illness, they get to go to Margate, a wonderful vacationland, forever.

I'm sure you can figure out the general outline of what's going on with the boys, at least, just from this. What's up with the girl doesn't become clear for a while.


( Spoilers through about the 40% mark )



( Spoilers for the entire book )



This book was critically acclaimed - it was a Kirkus best book of 2025 - but I thought it had major flaws, which unfortunately I can only describe by spoiling the entire book. It's not at all an original idea, and I do think we're supposed to be ahead of the characters, but maybe not that much ahead. It also contained a trope which I hate very much and its thesis contradicted itself, but how, again, is under the end cut. It's a very serious book about very serious real life stuff, but that part really didn't work for me because of spoilers.


Lots of people loved it though. It would probably make an interesting paired reading with a certain very acclaimed spoilery book (( Read more... )), which I have not read as I have been spoiled for the entire story and it doesn't really sound like something I'd enjoy no matter how great it is. But I suspect that it's the better version of this book.



Content Notes (spoilery): ( Read more... )

My New Year's resolution is to attempt to review every full-length published book that I read this year. We'll see how it goes. For my first full-length read of 2026, which is obviously highly symbolic, I have of course carefully selected a beautifully written novel with deep themes and social importance.

Just kidding! I randomly picked up a trashy beach read novel from the 80s, purchased at a thrift shop, while in the bathroom, got surprisingly engrossed in it, and took it out of the bathroom to read on the sofa. Which, to be fair, is probably symbolic of both the year to come and my reading habits in general.



Above an exclusive men's store on Rodeo Drive there is a private club called Butterfly, where women are free to act out their secret erotic fantasies.

I have a thing for "fancy sex club/brothel with highly-paid sex workers who like their jobs and fulfill your erotic fantasies." So I bought this book (50 cents, at a thrift shop) and actually read it even though it's in a genre I almost never read, which is the fat beach read about rich people's sex lives written in the 1980s.

Butterfly follows three women who patronize the club, Butterfly. It's named for the beautiful little butterfly charm bracelets women wear to the store to identify themselves to the staff as patrons of the club, so they can be whisked upstairs to have their sexual fantasies satisfied (just by men, alas), whether that means recreating a cowboy bar complete with sawdust on the floor to a bedroom where a sexy burglar breaks in to a dinner date where you argue about books, yes really. The women are all accomplished and successful, but have something missing or wrong in their lives: the surgeon can't have an orgasm, the pool designer deals with on the job sexism, and the lawyer is married to an emotionally abusive asshole. Their time at Butterfly leads, whether directly or indirectly, to positive changes in their lives.

( Spoilers are almost certainly not what you're expecting. )

This novel, while dealing seriously with some serious topics, is also basically a fun beach read. I read it in winter with a space heater and hot cider, which also works. I'm not sure it converted me to the general genre of 80s beach reads, but I sincerely enjoyed it.

Content notes: Child sexual abuse, child sexual slavery (not at the Butterfly sex club, everyone's a consenting adult there), forced abortion, emotional abuse.

I wrote three stories this Yuletide. The first two won't make much sense if you don't know the canons. With the third, all you really need to know is that mushi are magical creatures and Ginko solves people's mushi-related problems.

28 Years Later

Memento Mori. Dr. Kelson creates his masterpiece.

I really liked the movie, which is extremely different from the first one (also extremely different from the second, which I don't care for) and also extremely different from the brilliant trailer, which introduced me to the astonishing recording from 1915 (!) of actor Taylor Holmes reciting Kipling's poem "Boots." It's a post-apocalypse movie that's partly a coming of age story, partly an action/horror movie, and partly a beautiful and moving drama about life, death, and remembrance. And then there's the last two minutes, which are basically parkour Trainspotting.

I actually matched on The Leftovers, but I liked the 28 Days Later prompt so much that I wrote that instead.

Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey

Hunger. Both Lessa and Kylara are Searched for Nemorth's final clutch.

I just really enjoy writing in this canon. I love the dragons and McCaffrey created a lot of very interesting characters even if she often ended up not knowing quite what to do with them.

Mushishi

A Turn of the Wheel. Ginko encounters an unusual mushi in a village known for pottery.

Mushishi is an incredibly beautiful anime and manga with a dreamy, wistful atmosphere. I saw a prompt for mushi infesting a piece of pottery and could not resist. This story was also inspired by having recently visited Japan in the summer, a time of year I very much do not recommend for a visit if you can possibly avoid it. It's like living in a sauna. Now imagine doing a kiln firing in that sauna.

2025: A horrible year! Except for reading.

I see that I got increasingly too busy to actually write reviews, and also that the better a book is, the harder and more time-consuming it is to review. I will try to review at least some of these this year, and also to be more diligent about reviewing books soon after I actually read them.

The Tainted Cup & A Drop of Corruption, by Robert Jackson Bennett. Very, very enjoyable fantasy mysteries set in a very, very odd world whose technology and science is biology-based magic and kaiju attack every monsoon. The detectives are a very likable odd couple thinker/doer in the tradition of Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin or Hercule Poirot/Hastings, except that the eccentric thinker is a cantankerous old woman.

The Daughter's War, by Christopher Buehlman. This is a prequel to Blacktongue Thief; I liked that but I loved this. A dark fantasy novel in the form of a war memoir by a woman who enlisted into the experimental WAR CORVID battalion after so many men got killed in the battle against the goblins that they started drafting women. War is hell and the tone is much more somber than the first book as Galva isn't a wisecracker, but her own distinct voice and the WAR CORVIDS carry you through. You can read the books in either order; either way, the ending of each will hit harder emotionally if you've read the other first.

Arboreality, by Rebecca Campbell. I like to sell this in my bookshop as a mystery parcel labeled, in green Sharpie, "A green book. A mossy, woodsy, leafy book. A hopeful post-apocalyptic novel of the forest."

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty. The heroine is a middle-aged, single mom pirate dragged out of retirement for one last adventure, the setting is a fantasy Middle East, and it's just as fun as the description sounds.

The Bog Wife, by Kay Chronister. When the patriarch dies, the oldest son summons a wife from the bog to bear his children. Only the family is now in modern Appalachia rather than ancient Scotland, they're living in miserable conditions, and the last bog wife vanished under mysterious circumstances. Is there even a bog wife, or is this just a very small cult? (Or is there a bog wife and it's a very small cult?) A haunting, ambiguous, atmospheric novel.

The Everlasting, by Alix Harrow. This is probably my favorite book of the year. It's a time travel novel that's also an alternate version of the King Arthur story where most of the main characters are women, and it's also about living under and resisting fascism, and it's also a really fantastic love story with such hot sex scenes that it made me remember that sex scenes are hottest when they're based in character. (If you like loyalty/fealty kink, you will love this book.) It's got a lot going on but it all works together; the prose is sometimes very beautiful; it's got enough interesting gender themes that I'd nominate it for the Otherwise (Tiptree) award if I was a nominator. An excellent, excellent book.

King Sorrow, by Joe Hill. I've had mixed experiences reading Joe Hill but this book was fantastic. It's a big blockbuster dark fantasy novel that reads a bit like Stephen King in his prime, and I'm not saying that just because of Hill's parentage. Five college kids (and a non-college friend) summon an ancient, evil dragon to get rid of some truly terrible blackmailers. King Sorrow obliges, but they then need to give him another name every year. It's an enormous brick of a book and I'd probably only cut a couple chapters if I was the editor; it's long because there's a lot going on. Each section is written in the style of a different genre, so it starts off as a gritty crime thriller, then moves to Tolkien-esque fantasy, then Firestarter-esque psychic thriller, etc. This is just a blast to read.

Buffalo Hunter Hunter, by Stephen Graham Jones. Another outstanding horror novel by Jones. This one is mostly historical, borrowing from Interview with the Vampire for part of its frame story, in which a Blackfeet vampire named Good Stab tells his life story to a white priest. It's got a great voice, it's very inventive, it has outstanding set pieces, and it's extremely heartbreaking and enraging due to engaging with colonialist genocide, massacres, and the slaughter of the buffalo.

Hemlock & Silver , by T. Kingfisher. A very enjoyable fantasy with interesting horror and science fiction elements.

What Moves the Dead, What Feasts at Night, What Stalks the Deep, by T. Kingfisher. A set of novellas, the first two horror and the third mostly not, with a main character I really liked who's nonbinary in a very unique, culturally bound way. I particularly liked that this is lived and discussed in a way that does not feel like 2023 Tumblr. They're also just quick, fun, engrossing reads.

Lone Women, by Victor LaValle. An excellent historical fantasy with elements of horror, based on Montana's unique homesteading law which did not specify the race or gender of homesteaders, allowing black women to homestead. So Adelaide flees California for Montana, dragging with her an enormous locked steamer trunk, too heavy for anyone but her to lift, which she never, ever opens...

We Live Here Now, by Sarah Pinborough. What can I say? I really enjoy a good twist, and this has a doozy. Also, a great ending.

Pranksters vs. Autocrats: Why Dilemma Actions Advance Nonviolent Activism, by Srđa Popović. How to fight fascism with targeted mockery and other forms of nonviolent actions designed to put your opposition in an unwinnable situation. This costs five bucks, you can read it in less than two hours, and it was written by the leader of one of the student movements that helped overthrow Slobodan Milošević. This is not a naive book and it is very much worth reading.

Under One Banner, by Graydon Saunders. Commonweal # 4. Don't start here. I liked this a lot, hope to write about it in pieces when I re-read it, and was surprised and pleased to discover that it is largely about the ethics of magical neurosurgery and other forms of magical mental/neurological care/alteration.

Troubled Waters, by Sharon Shinn. A lovely, character-driven, small-scale fantasy. I wish this book had been the model for cozy fantasy, because it actually is one, only it has stakes and stuff happens. Also, one of the most original magic systems I've come across in a while.

Shroud, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. An outstanding first-contact novel with REALLY alien aliens.

Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir. I guess the premise is spoilery? ( Read more... ) That's not a criticism, I loved the book. Funny, moving, exciting, and a perfect last line. This is probably duking it out with The Everlasting for my favorite of the year.

I also very much enjoyed American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett, The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman, Dinotopia by James Gurney, Open Throat by Henry Hoke, When the Angels Left the Old Country, by Sacha Lamb, Elatsoe by Darcy Little Badger, The Bewitching & Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, Sisters of the Vast Black, by Lina Rather, Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, Liberated: The Radical Art and Life of Claude Cahun, by Kaz Rowe, Into the Raging Sea, by Rachel Slade, The Haar by David Sodergren, The Journey by Joyce Carol Thomas, Strange Pictures/Strange Houses by Uketsu, Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig, and An Immense World, by Ed Yong.

I'm probably forgetting some books. Sorry, forgotten books!

Did you read any of these? What did you think?