This is not for everyone of course. Stop it. “This book felt too YA for me.” “It was alright, but it was just so YA.” “I DNF’d that book; it was YA in everything but name.” Just stop. Stop using “YA” as an insult. But I don’t mean it as an insult. Sure sounds like you do. It’s pretentious and sophomoric to be blunt. And to be clear, I don’t mean that you should automatically start loving every YA book. I don’t expect that at all. It’s annoying. Here are some other things you can say instead regarding adult books you might dislike that are commonly attributed to YA books. (Note that I am not s ..read more

This article will contain spoilers for the entire Captive Prince series. I’ve never been the kind of child that took her favourite toys apart to see how they worked, nor am I the kind of reader that usually dissects a beloved story to see why it is hitting the right spots. However, when I found myself reaching yet again for the Captive Prince trilogy as a self-soothing mechanism, for maybe a tenth? Eleventh? Reread, I realized I might have a problem. And what better way to address it than making it everybody’s problem as well? The story of a prince, betrayed, enslaved, and secretly smuggled in ..read more

I don’t have a full-blown essay planned out for this, as it’s mostly just stream of conscious of things I’ve been thinking about lately. So there’s really no “point” to this lol What makes a favorite book, game, show, Excel formula, etc? I’d say the vast majority of people choose favorites based on their feelings, including myself. I mean, it’s all subjective, but someone could think a book is technically well written with fleshed out characters and a good plot but still not consider it a favorite. It doesn’t connect with them. So are favorites things that the person forms a (positive) connect ..read more

General disclaimer up top – I was given access to an e-copy of this book from the editor, and we are generally internet friends. However, all opinions expressed in this review are my own, and I am notoriously bad at finishing books I don’t like. Cyberpunk always seemed to me to be a flashy but ultimately passé genre. A curiosity I intended to indulge some day, but not a genre I’d seriously engage with. I’d not read any of the luminaries, perhaps because of my aversion to the stereotypical aesthetics of cyberpunk (shades, arrogant hackers with silly nicknames, noir neon cityscapes). So I approa ..read more

This review will contain spoilers for She Who Became the Sun. If you haven’t read it yet, feel free to check my review here. He Who Drowned the World was one of my most anticipated reads of 2023, and probably the most anticipated. It is in no way a hyperbole when I say I was counting the days until its release. And it was worth every minute. It’s a book of reckonings and consequences. General Ouyang and Wang Baoxiang, in particular, have to come to terms with their earth-shattering betrayal, the aftershocks of which set the tone for their respective arcs.  Ouyang has always been a…not ver ..read more

The Big Book of Cyberpunk, ed. by Jared Shurin I’ve been working on a really big book of cyberpunk – called, in fact, The Big Book of Cyberpunk. It is a proper cat-squasher: 1,000 pages, containing over a hundred stories. I’ve always been a cyberpunk fan, ever since I was kid. (Fun fact: I wrote my high school ‘term paper’ on Neuromancer. I was that guy.) But a lifetime of cyberpunk reading didn’t really prepare me for the experience of the last few years; that of reading millions and millions of words of the stuff. Magazines, zines, game manuals, clunky hypertext documents, leaflets, scripts ..read more

In There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm, we are introduced to the eponymous division, one of several different divisions that protect the world from non-standard threats men-in-black style. In this case, the Antimemetics Division deals with antimemes, ideas, things and beings that can alter memory or reality to obfuscate their very existence. What seems to start as a series of loosely related short stories about the division and the threats it deals with, soon starts to coalesce into a larger story about a threat to the world and humanity itself, with the earlier vignettes being key piece ..read more

As a fan of both the Harley Quinn animated show and the Birds of Prey movie, I was excited to see a new Harley Quinn audio drama from Realm. But I’m very aware that Harley Quinn stories can easily go in a direction that doesn’t interest me, and seeing “The Joker” in the title of the show was less than encouraging. The story follows Dr. Harleen Quinzel as she attempts to understand the inmates at Arkham Asylum. Taking place shortly after Batman dons his cape and cowl, Gotham has seen a huge surge in costumed supervillains, and Dr. Quinzel wants to know why. But it’s a tough job–especially whe ..read more

Malevolent has one of the most gripping opening scenes I’ve heard. Private investigator Arthur Lester wakes up in his office, completely blind and with no memory of who he is. Oh, and he has a demonic voice in his head. As if that isn’t intriguing enough, the entity inside his head has control of his vision, so Arthur can only “see” what’s around him through the narration of this disembodied voice. It’s a unique framing device that would only work in an audio medium, and I love it. The show also has some incredible fan art, which is admittedly how I heard about it in the first place. I mean se ..read more

Travis interviews fantasy author Brian McClellan about In The Shadow Of Lightning, the first book of his new epic fantasy series from Tor Books. From the author of the acclaimed Powder Mage series comes an epic fantasy where magic is a finite resource—and it’s running out. This episode is spoiler free! Brian and Travis discuss the business lessons he learned through self-publishing, the sheer work that goes into complex epic fantasy, and how incredibly cool we both were in high school marching band. Want us to read your message on the podcast? Find out more here. For early access to ..read more