2022 is well and truly in the rearview mirror, to which I say, good riddance. But if you’re interested in some of what was good about last year, my tranche of the annual year in review is up at Strange Horizons as of…two months ago.

I reviewed The Book Eaters, the debut novel by Sunyi Dean, for Strange Horizons earlier this month. There’s a lot going on in this book, and it’s definitely one of the best books I’ve read this year. Highly recommended, and I’ll be looking forward to Dean’s next book for sure.

My review of the first two books in this trilogy by Andrea Stewart went up at Strange Horizons yesterday. All in all they were a lot of fun, and I’ll be interested to see how Stewart ties everything together in the forthcoming The Bone Shard War.

My review of Mark Oshiro’s recent YA novel Each of Us a Desert went up at Strange Horizons at the end of June. I really liked Oshiro’s first book Anger Is a Gift and their new MG book The Insiders is on my e-reader. This book is vivid, unusual, and a compelling read.

Strange Horizons is doing their annual Kickstarter in October this year; you can contribute to the magazine and its planned special issues until the end of the month, and I highly recommend doing so.

My review of Katherine Addison’s 2020 novel The Angel of the Crows went up on Strange Horizons last month. I really wanted to like this book, but there’s too much questionable stuff in the subtext for me to fully endorse it, even as a committed and lifelong fan of Sherlock Holmes.

I also want to give a shout-out to Jenny Hamilton of Reading the End, whose review of the book last year first put me on the track of some of the problems I found in my reading.

My review of Tim Maughan’s Infinite Detail (2019) is up at Strange Horizons. I’m very pleased with this review, and I think this is the rare case where a long delay (I pitched it in the fall of last year, things happened, I got the assignment just before the March lockdown, and then quarantine brain happened) has actually helped make the book’s strengths more appreciable. If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend it highly.

Hello from the new world of quarantine. My review of Laurie J. Marks’ final Elemental Logic novel, Air Logic, is up at Strange Horizons. I can’t recommend these books enough, and I think their prickly, cozy, queer message about perseverance and making a better world out of the ruins of the old is pretty on point for these times. Wash your hands and stay safe.

My review of Gods of Jade and Shadow went up at Strange Horizons in September. In retrospect I wouldn’t have minded a little more Jazz in this Jazz Age novel, but it was very enjoyable all the same.

Somehow I forgot to link my portion of the Strange Horizons 2018 in Review on this blog. If you’re looking for things to read and watch at the solstice, you could do a lot worse than check out all three parts.

I got to review Ann Leckie’s fifth novel for Strange Horizons recently and I was extremely happy about it. I love Leckie, and this book was an interesting twist on her established themes. It’s also Hamlet as retold by a rock, but the rock is the actual protagonist of the story, and it was great. I’ve seen some people perhaps not quite grasp that; I’ve also seen people say they couldn’t get into the book. I can see how that could be the case, but I was immediately gripped by the question of how the two halves of the story fit together. It’s great, and if you were put off the Radch books for whatever reason, this is a great, very different book to read.