I don't mean to nitpick, Tom, but is this really your plan?

Since these reviews aren't spoilery and I am sad, no cut tags.

Elaine U. Cho, Ocean’s Godori: In a Korean-dominated space culture, a disgraced pilot tries to follow her captain, but her captain’s unwise decisions lead to conflicts with pirates and with people out to kill a scion of an important industrialist—the pilot’s old friend/partial source of her disgrace. Also, a new member of the crew comes from a death-handling caste and may have trouble fitting in. I probably could have done with more time to breathe on the worldbuilding, but if you like not-totally-cohesive crew stories this might suit.

David Ignatius, Phantom Orbit: I thought this would be more sf-y, but it’s basically a thriller about nations interfering with satellites to gain advantage, with much of the action sparked by the invasion of Ukraine.

Genevieve Cogman, Elusive: I liked this more than the first book—Eleanor continues to work for the Scarlet Pimpernel, and returns to France, but she has more agency and doubts about the work of saving aristocrats from the French Revolution. She also learns more about her powers, the mage inhabiting her head, and the relationship between mages and vampires. A cliffhanger ending rounds it out.

Shelly Jay Shore, Rules for Ghosting: Ezra Friedman is a trans man whose problems mainly stem from his complicated Jewish family, its funeral business, and the fact that Ezra can see ghosts. Although he’s been a peacemaker all his life, the stress starts to get to him when a shocking Seder announcement disrupts the family, a main source of income disappears and he has to return to working at the family business, and the hot Jewish guy checking him out turns out to be the widower of a ghost that is behaving very unusually. This is very cozy—ghosts are not evil or tangible—and it reinforced for me that I’m no longer much of a romance reader, because the Jewish specificity wasn’t even doing it for me.

Virginia Black, No Shelter But the Stars: Kyran is the princess of a people who are trying to retake their lost planet after being forced out by a brutal empire; Davia is the emperor’s daughter who has tried to renounce politics in favor of spirituality. After a battle, they crash land and are forced to rely on each other to survive. It’s enemies-to-lovers, with the more experienced Davia teaching Kyran to calm her frantic soul. I thought the description of physical recovery from the serious injuries described was a bit unrealistic, but if you really like enemies-to-lovers, this might work for you.

Garth Nix, We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord: In 70s? Australia, the protagonist and his genius little sister are being raised by quirky parents who don’t allow things like TV. When his little sister finds a mysterious sphere that can talk in people’s heads and even change their behavior, he has to turn from his D&D games to saving the world. I think I would have enjoyed it as a middle-grade reader (it naturally seems slighter now).

Madeline Ashby, vN: Conscious, self-replicating Von Neumann machines are a controversial but significant part of the world; they have fail-safes that require them to love and not harm humans. Amy Peterson is a vN whose growth has been carefully constrained by food restriction so that her mother (another vN) and her father (a human) can raise her like a human child. But when she’s five, her grandmother shows up and attacks her mother for being a traitor. Amy reacts immediately—by eating her grandmother. Now she’s a lot larger, has her grandmother living in her consciousness, and lacks the fail-safe. Interesting stuff going on here; warning for sexual abuse of vN (not of Amy) as a motivating factor for several key points.

James S.A. Corey, Livesuit: Humanity’s in a war of extermination with aliens, and so some people sign up to do Forever War journeys, but with a twist: They’re put into exosuits that make them incredibly strong and improve their senses. It seems like a worthy mission. But is something deeply, terribly wrong? Creepy novella.

Holly Jackson, The Reappearance of Rachel Price: Sixteen years ago, Rachel Price disappeared, leaving her toddler in her car. Her family consents to a documentary about the case in order to get money to take care of an elderly relative with dementia. But, while the documentary is being filmed, Rachel Price reappears. Her daughter is suspicious; they were doing fine without her. A rather gothic plot unfolds. I see why people liked it, but I don’t think this is the variety of thriller for me.

Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods: In 1998, four loser kids and one golden boy were best friends—they called the bond between them the Covenant. But one night, drinking and doing drugs out in the woods, they came across a staircase standing alone in the woods, and the golden boy climbed it and disappeared, along with the staircase. Decades later, the one who stayed in their town calls the rest of them back, and leads them to another staircase. Trapped in an apparently unending house of horrors, can they survive and maybe find out what really happened? Effectively creepy in its use of trauma and the mundane; a few typos in the eARC.

Daryl Gregory, When We Were Real: Gregory seems endlessly inventive; this novel is set in a world with irrefutable proof that we live in a simulation, including Impossibles, which are phenomena that can’t be explained using physics (as well as a weekly text reminder that we are living in a simulation beamed to everyone’s brain—not clear what happens if the recipient can’t read). Some have responded with nihilism, considering everyone else (except perhaps fellow gun-toting, Matrix-loving incels) to be bots. On a tour of seven American Impossibles, a pregnant influencer, a rabbi, a nun (and accompanying novice), two German tourists, a would-be right-wing podcaster and his feckless son, a comic book writer, and his best friend, a retired engineer, join an inexperienced tour guide and seen-everything bus driver. But the trip gets more complicated when a fugitive joins them. Her mission is mysterious but urgent. Each of the characters has a distinctive perspective—the Engineer (“The thing is ridiculously oversized and out of scale, like a Koons Balloon Dog. He also doesn’t know how he feels when he looks at a Koons Balloon Dog.”), the Realist’s Son (“Why was anyone shocked that the world was not in our control, and that nothing we did mattered? The Simulators could hit reset at any time. Or climate change would kill us all. Same difference.”), and so on. I loved it.

The Neurodiversiverse: Alien Encounters, ed. Anthony Francis: I’m not a big poetry fan, so the poems sprinkled throughout didn’t do much for me. Brian Starr’s The Interview engaged with the idea that, just because you’re not like other humans doesn’t mean that you have common interests with another entity who’s not like humans. Power fantasies (of which there were a number, where neurodiversity enables success) are fine and welcome, but I liked the challenge. Stewart C. Baker’s The List-Making Habits of Heartbroken Ships is likely to appeal to Murderbot fans for reasons suggested by the title.

Sung-il Kim, trans. Anton Hur, Blood of the Old Kings: A widow who lost her young child as well determines to rebel against the oppressive conquerors who killed them, and seeks out the defeated dragon that used to protect her country for help. Meanwhile, a young sorcerer determines to escape her fate of being used as an undead power generator for the same empire, and a young man seeks to find the murderer of his friend, no matter who he angers in the process. The widow, Loren, doesn’t spend too much narrative time contemplating what she’s lost, although she does share a few memories; she’s too busy finding out that politics are complicated even in a rebellion against a terrible enemy. Unusually for the fantasies I tend to read, there’s also no romance or really sexual energy at all.

Anyone who can make a really good, clear infographic--a competitively sized budget exists for this, so recommendations for someone good are welcome. 

Re-reading The Expanse series and really struck by ( Thematic spoilers, I guess )

Seth Dickinson, The Monster Baru Cormorant: Second volume in the series featuring Baru Cormorant, taken from her home to serve the empire that conquered it and that despises her for her racial inferiority and her tribadism. I found it violent and confusing and more interested in jerking Baru and others around than I was in following the twists of the story.

Ilona Andrews, Blood Heir: Kate’s adopted daughter, much changed by her encounter with Moloch, returns to Atlanta to save Kate’s life, followed by a prophecy that if Kate sees her then Kate will definitely die. Lots of politics and magic ensue, and a bit of romantic longing. It’s what I wanted without requiring things in Kate’s life to get undone, which was nice.

Tobias Buckell, Shoggoths in Traffic: Short stories; the zombie pandemic one where we all die because racism was a little on the nose for me, though the fact that it was written in 2018 suggests that I need to keep reading. I preferred the retelling of The Emperor’s New Clothes where the news reports on the controversy and doesn’t judge. Buckell’s interest in complicity, including complicity with destroying the world as well as in smaller crimes, shows in various ways.

James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Falls: Final novel, they say, in the Expanse series. The core characters are older and changed, especially Amos, except in the ways he’s exactly the same (he’s not very communicative on the matter). Holden and Nagata do what they do—him rigid insistence and her subtle politics—and they try to deal with the fact that old gods are trying to kill them.

Xiran Jay Zhao, Iron Widow: Zetian volunteers as a concubine for the kaiju-fighting mechs that keep her country safe; concubines are routinely killed by the male pilots who consume their minds as part of piloting the mechs. But Zetian plans to kill the man who killed her beloved older sister. Among other things, she discovers that, in a mech, her bound feet don’t make it all but impossible for her to walk. But her plans are disrupted when she’s assigned to an equally disliked male pilot—a murderer who is allowed to pilot only because he’s stronger by a lot than anyone else. When he can’t kill her either, they become central to a planned attack—but still despised. I saw someone say that this seemed very second-wave feminist, in that the bad guys are just outright willing to harm women, and the society of which they are a part, because of misogyny, and that seems correct. Enough interesting threads were left hanging that I’d pick up the sequel.

C.M. Waggoner, The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry: Fantasy starring a gutter firewitch who’s a bit too fond of gin. In an attempt to make the rent, she joins a crew of witches protecting a fine young lady before her marriage, one of whom is a respectable clanner who might be a great meal ticket for her. But things get complicated, both murderously and romantically, and she has to somehow infiltrate a drugmaking operation and make the very stuff that her mother is addicted to, in hopes of being able to save those she loves (and some she’s not so fond of). It’s a lot of fun, and includes a skeletal mouse named Buttons who is both cuter and more horrifying than he sounds like.

Songs of Love and Death: All-Original Tales of Star-Crossed Love, ed. George R.R. Martin: Contributions from big names including Peter Beagle, Jim Butcher, Marjorie Liu, Diana Gabaldon (different time traveler than Outlander, same idea), Robin Hobb, and Neil Gaiman, but I didn’t feel most of them. The Gaiman story was a nice chilly reversal of the imaginary girlfriend trope—a man’s high school imaginary girlfriend starts trying to reconnect with him.

Jacqueline Carey, Miranda and Caliban: A retelling from the perspective of the two titular characters. I found I didn’t like it as much as her LoTR retelling; patriarchy/colonialism has and keeps the upper hand throughout the novel, so be prepared.

Charles Stross, The Traders’ War: Second book in the Merchant Princes revised series; Miriam aka Helge is not settling well into her medieval princess role, instead getting into various trouble that leaves her much more powerless than a standard protagonist. But lots of politics are happening in all three worlds and she gets caught up in all of them. Also, various wars break out and there is a forced pregnancy (via reproductive technology). It is interesting but tends in the direction of “humans inevitably screw things up one way or another.”

Hark! The Herald Angels Scream, ed. Christopher Golden: Really more winter-themed horror than entirely Christmas-themed; a number of stories using the short story format effectively to end just as or before the really awful thing happens, like Scott Smith’s Christmas in Barcelona (child death). I disliked the last story by Sarah Pinborough, The Hangman’s Bride—it’s about the ghost of a murdered Japanese woman who ends up saving a white woman to be the new bride of her widower in Victorian England, so the function of the nonwhite horror trope is to give the surviving white people a happily ever after.

Nancy Kress, The Eleventh Gate: In the distant future, humanity is scattered across a few different planets, none of them Earth; some are run by libertarians (controlled by a single family because that’s how power works) and others are run by a corporate nanny state, with only Polyglot having something like democracy. When the discovery of a new gate between worlds, promising access to a new planet, destabilizes things, war breaks out and internal dissent threatens to take down both non-Polyglot regimes. It’s got Kress’s standard pessimism about governance as well as a lot of palace intrigue and some sf on the nature of consciousness.

Eliot Schrefer, The Darkness Outside Us: Two teens on a mission to Titan to save one’s sister start to wonder if something else is going on, since the ship’s AI won’t tell them certain things and there are certain oddities in the setup. What is actually happening is disclosed midway through and the rest is working out what to do with it—this is a book largely about how to accept unmoveable constraints and plainly-seen-in-front-of-you losses. Also a teen romance, though how romantic it is to connect with the only other person in your world is perhaps debatable; the protagonists are from two contending cultures and have both mistrust and a bit of misperception to get past.

Steven Brust, The Baron of Magister Valley: On further thought, I still find the mocking-old-fashioned style of “I want to know X,” “Oh, you want to know X?” “I have hardly wanted anything else for a week now” more unpleasant to read than not. The basic story is of a young man betrayed and imprisoned in a secret jail for hundreds of years, while he learns all the skills and his fiancee and her brother, orphaned in the same course of shenanigans, struggle to survive. You may recognize the outlines from the Count of Monte Cristo, but it is very integrated into Dragaeran lingo.

Charles Stross, Halting State: In a sort-of-independent Scotland, a bank robbery in a gameworld draws the police into something far stranger, with spies, people pretending to be spies in a game, and the occasional murder. Packed with Stross’s love of tech and bureaucracy, but not really him at his best.

The Devil and the Deep: Horror Stories of the Sea ed. Ellen Datlow, authors include Michael Marshall Smith (zombie-ish horror), Seanan McGuire (not super interesting family revenge story), and Stephen Graham Jones (deserted island variant). Alyssa Wong’s What My Mother Left Me is a great variation on an old story, and Bradley Denton’s A Ship of the South Wind seems a bit of a stretch—there’s no sea, only a former sailor on the plains—but it’s a pretty good horror story nonetheless.

Zoe Chant, Leader Lion: ( Shifter romance )
Erin Bow, ( YA dystopia with AIs and hostages )

Kat Howard, An Unkindness of Magicians: ( hidden magic )
Amie Kaufman, Illuminae: ( why has space snark stayed the same? )
Catherine Asaro, Schism: ( anti-empaths )
Zan Romanoff, Grace and the Fever: ( fandom is her way of life )
Victor LaValle, The Changeling: ( sea-changed )
James S.A. Corey, Persepolis Rising: ( expanding Expanse )
Fran Wilde, Updraft: ( fly! )
Naomi Alderman, The Power: ( Long review about what bugged me )

Sarah Maas, Tower of Dawn: ( the saga continues )

Abigail Nussbaum’s review of Lucy explains really well what I liked, and didn’t like, about it.

I also liked rachelmanija's review of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians—if you can stand spoilers (heed the content warnings), there is good discussion in the comments.

( Daniel Abraham )

( Loki down under )

( Steven Brust & Skyler White )

( Jim Butcher )

( James S.A. Corey )

( A Justice League Mirrorverse crossover )