Yes, folks, it's that time again. I must make a list and check it twice, so as to find out who's been naughty and nice.
Short Story
I've started subscribing to The Deadlands, and the very first issue, Winter 2026, has a banger of a story. "You Build Your House On Your Father's Corpse," by Sadoeuphemist, is a surreal exploration of death and parenting.
"To Walk This Distant Shore With You," A.D. Sui, Clarkesworld Magazine September 2026. (When I got to the end of this story, I realized the room had grown quite dusty. This is a beautiful story about two friends separated by space and forty years of time. One remains on Earth, their mind stretched over many light-years to "couple" with a six-limbed remote robot, preparing a distant planet for settlement by a ship that left Earth forty years previously, bearing the other friend. Through all those decades, their friendship endures, as one friend will live in the colony built by the friend left behind.)
"Skin and Glass," R.P. Sand, Clarkesworld Magazine September 2026. (This is a short story that packs quite a punch, as its central conceit is the discovery that prolonged eye contact with anyone causes your life force to leak out. [One could just as easily substitute "phone screens" in that statement.] The story builds to a simple, stark, furious question: "well, yes, we will live to be 150 years old [by isolating ourselves and avoiding eye contact] but who the fuck wants 150 years of this?" Indeed.)
"All the Ruined Doorways of the Moon," Eilis O'Neal, Clarkesworld Magazine August 2026. (This is a harrowing little tale of an abusive marriage and a rigid, misogynistic Victorian culture transplanted to the moon, and an abused wife who uses an ancient alien dooray to escape.)
"Three Fortunes On Alcestis As Told By the Fraud Baeliss Shudal," Louis Inglis Hall, Clarkesworld Magazine February 2026. (This is is the tale of a "false" fortune-teller who nevertheless manages to tell quite a bit of truth. This story has a touch of the horrific as well, as the protagonist reads the mad emperor's fortune in the "shattered entrails of an entire civilization." This is another story that is on the quiet side, but the further you read the more steam it gathers, and the more it pays off at the end.)
"Painstaking," Rich Larson, Clarkesworld Magazine February 2026. (This story is a cyberpunk story set in Nigeria dealing with family and identity. The premise is a bit bonkers--the protagonist, Mars, is inhabited by an immortal alien organism that has turned his body into something resembling a starfish, capable of regenerating a twin, called a "clone-brother," Balarabe, after Mars was accidentally cut in half. This is a rather gross idea that gets explored in detail in this story, and ends up being quite interesting.)
"The Stars You Can't See By Looking Directly," Samantha Murray, Clarkesworld Magazine January 2026. (This is an interesting little story that is a cross between science fiction and magical realism. The precipitating event, snow on Christmas Day in Australia at the height of summer, sets off a chain of events that represent a new evolution for the human race, with all babies conceived thereafter apparently genetically modified humans. The story becomes a quiet, thoughtful examination of the past and the future of humanity, and what it will mean for the respective children of the protagonist and her best friend, one of which will be an "old" human and one of which will be new. This story packs quite a punch.)
"The Desolate Order of the Head in the Water," A.W. Prihandita, Clarkesworld Magazine January 2026. (This is a creepy little horror story, and the title is fully accurate. It's a near-future story of an all-conquering AI, and is as bleak as you might expect. It's probably not something you want to read if you're depressed. Having said that, why did I like it, you ask? Well, even bleak stories, if written well enough and with compelling characters, can worm inside your head and stay there. This is one of those.)
"Macaroni Art in the Age of Filtration," Ryan Cole, Clarkesworld Magazine April 2026. (This is a story with a rather bleak setting--environmental destruction and underground colonies that sometimes run out of air--that nevertheless shines in its portrayal of a young woman's love for her little brother.)
"Human Studies 401," Abbie Nicole Yee, Clarkesworld Magazine April 2026. (This is a flash SF/horror story about godlike aliens, and love, and the former using the latter to do the human race in. It doesn't have a happy ending, but the story is a knife you don't know is cutting you until you've reached the end.)
"The Profitable Sentience of Household Gods," Louis Inglis Hall, Clarkesworld Magazine May 2026. (Hall is a new writer, but so far I've really liked all of his stories. This is a tale of a benevolent AI who wants to serve its humans and rises through the ranks, only for the story to take an unexpected darker turn.)
"Archaeological Evidence for the Time Traveler," Tia Tashiro, Clarkesworld Magazine May 2026. (This is a poignant story of time travel, and a mother's love for her son, reaching out across the centuries.)
"Conquerers," Nick Wolven, Clarkesworld Magazine May 2026. (This is a really interesting story, set on a colony planet with a bit of philosophical discussion: Grounders vs. Spacers; rough, uncouth, spoiled explorers vs. settled stay-at-home settlers and ecologists. It reminded me of N.K. Jemisin's story "Emergency Skin," where Earth was improved immeasurably once the rich white supremacist snots left.)
"Piglet Delivers," Maria Haskins, Apex Magazine February 2026. (Now that the Pooh characters are in the public domain, other writers can do something with them. This is a dark tale of a reimagined Hundred Acre Wood, where Christopher Robin has abandoned his animal friends, Piglet is a truck driver, and Kanga and Roo are the local Mafia-like enforcers.)
"The Bathhouse for Long Life," Claire Jia-Wen, Apex Magazine May 2026. (This story has as its protagonist the daughter of a spider demon, and talks about the Kingdom of Women and the "springs of conception and abortion," a thinly veiled metaphor for the rotten state of reproductive rights in this country. I don't care if you don't like messages in your fiction; sometimes we need them, especially in times like these. This is more elegant than most, but it is incredibly hard-hitting.)
"You Are Invited To Our SPRING CELEBRATION," Thoraiya Dyer, Clarkesworld Magazine March 2026. (The alien protagonist of this story gives off Project Hail Mary Rocky-like vibes, although its culture is better thought out and stands in stark contrast to the humans it's befriending. It also has a rather dark twist and boasts an ambiguous ending, leaving it to the reader to make up their minds as to what might happen next.)
Novelette
"Donor Unknown," Nika Murphy, Clarkesworld Magazine January 2026. (This is a clever, complicated story of an android matchmaker wearing the holographic face of a human, who goes hunting for a painting taken from a Jewish family during the Nazi occupation in 1941. This story deals with prejudice and ghosts of the Holocaust, and generational trauma. It talks at the very end about "loving one's true self," so it has a nice uplifting conclusion.)
"D0G," Tania Fordwalker, Clarkesworld Magazine April 2026. (This is a post-apocalyptic story that is not about flesh-and-blood dogs--note the title's spelling--but is nevertheless about dogs, and loyalty, and impossible choices.)
Novel
This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me, Ilona Andrews (5 of 5 stars, full review here). (The author is better known for their Kate Daniels urban fantasy series, but this portal fantasy, with the meta storyline of the protagonist unexpectedly being transported to the city of Kair Toren, the setting of the infamously unfinished epic fantasy series she has read over and over again, is definitely a leveling up. If you like rich, layered worldbuilding, snap this up.)
Children of Strife, Adrian Tchaikovsky (5 of 5 stars, full review here). (I've read plenty of the author's books, but this fourth entry in the award-winning Children of Time series is one of his best. Do not miss it.)
Ode To the Half-Broken, Suzanne Palmer (5 of 5 stars, full review here). (This is a lovely story of a future post-collapse Earth and the new civilization that is arising from the ashes, a civilization based on understanding and cooperation. Most of the characters are artificial intelligences and the various bodies they inhabit [including, delightfully, trains]. Our main character, the former war mecha Be, goes on a journey of self-discovery, coming to terms with its past and changing its future.)
Daggerbound, T. Kingfisher, (5 of 5 stars, full review here). (This fantasy, set in the author's World of the White Rat, is full of awesome characters and boasts a clever slow-burn romance, and is utterly delightful. You can tell the author had loads of fun writing this story, and therefore you have loads of fun reading it.)
A Trade of Blood, Robert Jackson Bennett (5 of 5 stars, full review here). (This third book in the Ana and Din fantasy mystery series is just as good as the first [though I do feel a small pang for the previous series title, Shadow of the Leviathan]. There is a great deal of fungal-based body horror in this one, Last of Us-style, so if you're sensitive to that you might want to steer clear. )
The Tapestry of Fate, Shannon Chakraborty (4 of 5 stars, full review here). (This second book in the Amina al-Sirafi pirate series features a protagonist who is over forty and a mother, who is tasked to retrieve a magic spindle. This story actually goes to some pretty dark places, and features an ending that will make you scream--as in, "Aaaaah, I need the next book immediately!")
Ignore All Previous Instructions, Ada Hoffman (4 of 5 stars, full review here). (This is a potent mixture of the horrors of generative AI and the horrors currently being inflicted on the LGBTQ community, set in a future where humanity has expanded into the solar system.)
Twelve Months, Jim Butcher (4 of 5 stars, full review here). (This 18th volume of the long-running urban fantasy Dresden Files is one of the better offerings in the series. It's slower-paced, more thoughtful and reflective, and deals with the aftereffects of trauma and grief. It's also an effective character study of the protagonist, Harry Dresden. I think it's a good setup for the remaining books in the series.)
Young Adult
To Ride a Rising Storm, Moniquill Blackgoose (This book isn't as good as the first in the series, To Shape a Dragon's Breath; it's very much a middle-trilogy book, including an abrupt and somewhat annoying cliffhanger ending. Nevertheless, the world is more complex, and if this story is quieter and more slice-of-life [and also clearly setting things up for the finale], it makes up for it with its expanded worldbuilding. Indeed, the magical sigils, called "skiltas," that control a dragon's breath are becoming so convoluted I can hardly follow them. That's on me, however, not the author. Anequs and her dragon are growing up, and she is even more determined to preserve her people and their way of life, protecting them from the culture-destroying Anglish.)
Downfall, Marc J. Gregson (4 of 5 stars, full review here). (This is the third book in the young-adult science fantasy Sky's End trilogy. The pacing in this book is off, but once the story slows down a bit, it comes to a satisfying end. The protagonist Conrad manages to defeat his terrible uncle, and as the story ends he is basically having to rebuilt his world. This trilogy is not like any other YA story out there.)
Graphic Novel
Absolute Wonder Woman Vol. 2: As My Mothers Made Me, written by Kelly Thompson; Hayden Sherman, artist (5 of 5 stars, full review here). (The first volume of this series, The Last Amazon, was the best graphic novel I read last year, and this continues the series' excellence. Kelly Thompson has really gotten to the heart of who Diana is, and the artwork in this volume is stellar. You should not miss it.)
Series
The Dresden Files, Jim Butcher (See my review of Twelve Months, above. The Dresden Files are one of the few urban fantasy books from the early-oughts still around.)
Ana & Din Mysteries, Robert Jackson Bennett (see my review of A Trade of Blood, above. If you vote and/or nominate for the Hugos, this will be the first year this series can be nominated, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's on the ballot.)
The World of the White Rat, T. Kingfisher. (see my review of Daggerbound, above. This one's a little more complicated, as the Swordheart subseries, in itself, doesn't have enough total words to be nominated. But the series snuck onto the ballot once before, so we'll see.)
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