Tag: recent reads

Recent Reads: The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands

October 16, 2025

Recent Reads: The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands, Sarah Brooks – someone recommended this to me, IDEK who, but I’m grateful to them for it: it’s surreal and fantastic and a thrumming good read. The premise is roughly that the moral equivalent of the East India Company has built a railroad connecting Moscow to Bejing, through the walled-off wasteland of Siberia, which has long-since become a surreal expanse of inexplicable and encroaching magical change that threatens everything normal beyond the Walls. The Train is the only thing that can…

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Recent Reads: A DARK HISTORY OF SUGAR

September 25, 2025

Recent Reads: A Dark History of Sugar by Neil Buttery – informative, interesting, and often a difficult read, as it should be I don’t know exactly how I came across this one, but I find food histories fascinating, particularly when they’re focused on one specific item and how its cultural importance affected…everything. This is a good example, following the history of sugar, particularly processed white sugar, through its development, its growing popularity, and the absolute horrors that were undertaken to fill greed both toothsome and financial. It is, as I…

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Recent Reads: SILENT SONGS

September 18, 2025

Recent Reads: SILENT SONGS by AC Crispin & Kathleen O’Malley – this is possibly my favorite, and my least favorite, Starbridge novel all wrapped up in one. (amazon affiliate link) The world it’s set on, Trinity, is my favorite of the Starbridge worlds/cultures: peopled by intelligent avians who speak via sign language and make magnificent weavings, it’s just… I love it. It’s a beautiful world, and the human lead, Tesa, is a Deaf Souix heyoka (trickster, shamanistic person). She’s my favorite Starbridge lead, and…yeah, I just love her, her story,…

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Recent Reads: A HONEYMOON OF GRAVE CONSEQUENCE

September 4, 2025

Recent Reads: A HONEYMOON OF GRAVE CONSEQUENCE by Stephanie Burgis – this is absolutely charming. I read an advance copy of this second in a series of novellas about Lord Riven, Vampire, and Lady Riven, Scholar, whose situationship we’re introduced to in A MARRIAGE OF UNDEAD CONVENIENCE and continues on now (and hopefully for quite some time after this!). I liked MARRIAGE very much, and HONEYMOON is better: it’s nearly twice as long, and the length helps the story to feel more complete within itself (my only problem with MARRIAGE…

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Recent Reads: Fluke

July 24, 2025

Recent Reads: Fluke by Brian Klaas – an interesting nonfiction book about the power of chance in our lives which does itself a considerable disservice in the final (pre-conclusion) chapter. The basic premise of this book isn’t one the author had to sell me on: that the entire world functions on more sheer chance than most of us want to admit. He makes a good case for this, then discusses the flaws of the social sciences in how they dismiss it, though with thoughtful and non-accusatory commentary on WHY they…

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