What I'm Reading: The Second Half of 2025

I want to declare book amnesty for myself, having fallen behind on my habit of writing up my reading habits (previously in January, April, and August of 2025). In rough order, with some books probably missing, here’s what I’ve read since July.

Books

• Unquenchable Fire, by Rachel Pollack: A really unique book about a woman living in a religious dystopia. Miracle-working fundamentalists of a storytelling-based religion have remade America in their image, but the magic of their religion seems to have died out. Our main character is propelled by forces beyond her control (often violently) to bring a realignment to her world.
• Dr. Bloodmoney, by Phillip K Dick: A post-apocalypse story with strange ideas about disability and delusion. Not my favorite, but I like it better than The Lathe of Heaven which is LeGuin working in the same vein.
• Star Wars: Ronin, by Emma Mieko Candon: I actually liked this better than Candon’s later The Archive Undying, which descended into near-incomprehensibility in its third act. I still think Candon has issues with muddy characterization and overcomplicated plots in both works, though.
• Brown Girl in the Ring, by Nalo Hopkinson: A novel in a sort of cyberpunk apocalypse Toronto, with some fantastical elements. It’s a great read but it was pretty funny that I ended up going to Toronto two weeks after I finished it.
• Girlfriends, by Emily Zhou: Excellent short story collection about contemporary trans life. Read it!
• Spelunky, by Derek Yu: Dive into Yu’s career and philosophy, as well as some of the development and release of the titular game. Recommended to anyone who’s interesting in indie gamedev
• The Library of Broken Worlds, by Alaya Dawn Johnson: Science fiction about a library in a wormhole-filled space opera kind of setting; our main character grapples with questions of her humanity and increasing scopes of politics to avert a genocide. Just the right level of strange.
• A/S/L, by Jeanne Thornton: Three young not-yet-out trans women make a game together online, before a convulsive falling-out and sseparation. They then all grow into varying types of dysfunctional womanhood, leading to their re-connection as adults. Stressful and very tense. Also partially set in my neighborhood, which is a first. High point of the year.
• A Safe Girl to Love, by Casey Plett: Another excellent short story collection about trans life! Probably a substantial inspiration for Girlfriends.
• Chain Gang All Stars, by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: Dystopian future where America’s prisons feature gladiatorial death games, following a cast of mostly incarcerated characters. Good skewering of America’s sports culture, oddly reminiscent of The Hunger Games?
• Idlewild, by James Frankie Thomas: Two young women attending a Quaker school in NYC in 2002 navigate coming of age and queerness (one of them is a self-conscious lesbian; the other… well that’s covered throughout the novel). Breezed through it on an Amtrak to Toronto.
• The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K LeGuin: The gender stuff is boring and kinda retrograde, yes. But I think this is a great novel if you’re not looking for it to be a Masterwork of Queerness.
• The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson: Wait is this one actually a Masterwork of Queerness? Either way it’s peerless. I’ve never really been compelled by haunted houses before but this one very much compelled me.
• Keeping Two, by Jordan Crane: Random comic I picked up at the library. It was fine.
• The Witch Elm, by Tana French: Mystery / suspense novel starring an absolutely rancid dude. I think I liked it, but it did test my limits for inhabiting a PoV character who sucks.
• The Devourers, by Indrapramit Das: Maybe it’s because I just watched the AMC show this summer, but I would describe this book as “Bangladeshi Interview with the Vampire but with werewolves.” Queer, feral, lots of piss.
• The Incandescent, by Emily Tesh: Magic school but we’re following the teacher instead of the students. Not as daring as Some Desperate Glory but it also holds together much better. Inevitable Scholomance comparisons aren’t misplaced.
• One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, by Omar El Akkad: I think I wanted the wrong thing from this book. I expected a lot more analysis and history, and got a lot more memoir. Wasn’t blown away, but I was convinced at book club that this is probably a good dip-your-toe-in entrypoint for Western liberals.
• Sabriel, by Garth Nix: Re-read of a classic YA fantasy novel, in preparation for running my current campaign.
• A Storm of Wings, by M John Harrison: I’m starting to see why people like Harrison and Viriconium so much. The Pastel City, our first Viriconium novel, is a pretty straightforward deep-history, swords-and-spaceships kind of book. This one has much more complex prose and also significantly more interesting ideas. I’m absolutely stealing the premise: “bugs who come from another dimension invade Earth from the moon.”
• The Raven Scholar, by Antonia Hodgson: Basically perfect execution of the YA fantasy genre, but in the format of an adult fantasy book. Chinese-inspired court drama turns out to be the perfect blend with a “pick-and-choose your faction” type setting.
• Ink, Scholar, Sister, Scribe, by Emma Törzs: Twisty and propulsive urban fantasy. Not too much to say about it, other than it’s good.
• Disappoint Me, by Nicola Dinan: In the last quarter of the year, I nearly neglected trans litfic. Glad I dipped back in for this one. Disappoint Me was gripping, with twinned perspectives that had me white-knuckling my way to the inevitable emotional car crash.
• Wolf in White Van, by John Darnielle: Darnielle is an amazing writer. I got to see him performing live this fall, and I love his music, but his writing is the major draw for me. Wolf is easily my favorite novel of his (beating out Universal Harvester and Devil House) for the way it captures a sense of bone-deep alienation. It’s a book that left me feeling profoundly alone and deeply upset.
• The Jakarta Method, by Vincent Bevins: This is one of the most straightforward nonfiction books I have ever read. The first third is a recent history of Indonesian politics, mostly focusing on the few decades after independence. The next third is a detailed account of the anticommunist mass murder program that was instituted in the '60s. The last third is Bevins drawing direct lines from the violence in Indonesia to anticommunist and anti-Left violence across the world. A sobering and painful read, but politically worthwhile.
• Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson: I had an impulse to revisit Baru this year and was richly rewarded. This debut novel from Dickinson is still their best work, and frankly stands head-and-shoulders above its empire-focused-speculative-fiction peers (the Ancillary series, A Memory Called Empire, Ninefox Gambit, you know the ones).
• Metal From Heaven, by August Clarke: After the last four books, I needed a break. I texted a friend “the next one is going to be lighter.” Nope! Instead I reached for another “butch gets tortured by Empire” book, this time with a lot more derring-do. Metal From Heaven’s first half is a rip-roaring and tragic adventure story with a laser focus on the immiseration of the Second Industrial Revolution; its second half is a less-strong-but-still compelling political thriller; and its denouement is an ambitious experiment that totally falls flat for me. With a better ending this would easily be my book of the year. Would also be nice if there was any hint of transfemininity in this book about queer and gender-non-conforming women. I still highly recommend checking it out.
• The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold: If you can handle a 30-something man’s love interest being a late-teen girl (I barely could), this is a solid fantasy novel. Just enough grit and darkness to be my comedown from the last few reads, while being overall more bearable. I’ll probably read the sequel soon.
• Monster Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson: My understanding is that Monster and Tyrant were supposed to be one book, and it shows. I don’t think this is a very good novel taken on its own, but I still enjoyed reading it. If you haven’t read Baru yet and are thinking about it, plan to read the sequel novels as one piece.
• Tyrant Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson: Especially when taken with Monster, this is a great entry. I really admire the decision to provide a resting point, a passable ending for the series, while leaving the door open for the planned fourth book.
• Everlasting, by Alix Harrow: My first successful foray into a romantasy, off the strength of a trusted book friend. I’m not too proud to admit “gruff woman knight” works on me. This is the queerest het romance I’ve read, and probably the trans-est cis romance I’ve read?

Games

This year I discovered the joy of playing narrative and puzzle games with my partner, so here’s a couple of text-heavy games that fit the “reading” theme.

• Blue Prince: Game of the year easily, despite its often-frustrating gameplay loop. If you’re down to do some deckbuilding in service of exploring a (haunted?) mansion, it’s fun to painstakingly unravel the story and conspiracy at the heart of the game.
• Venba: Absolutely heartbreaking game about food, family, and the immigrant experience. Really short too, it’s like one feature film worth of gameplay. Arts funding is awesome, I wish it was real.
• The Curse of the Obra Dinn: The actual narrative you learn in Obra Dinn isn’t the point. The point is the presentation (an understated technical marvel, by the by) and the unique structure: moving through the story of a doomed English trading voyage one death at a time.
• Frog Detective: Sorry to be a grinch but I didn’t vibe with this at all. Maybe it was too fondly talked about by my cohort, but I expected something more than an hour of hit-or-miss gags, some basic adventure game mechanics, and cute character designs.