June 2026 - Reviewed

Thus we finish the first half of 2026, and begin freewheeling downhill towards the Christmas break! Here in Sydney we have been shivering away as winter has taken hold, lowering the temperature to the low teens and even the occasional single digit night! To those of you reading this in the Northern hemisphere, most of which appears to be cosplaying as the fires of hell, I send my sympathies and a request that you stay hydrated and wear sunscreen.

I have spent this month mostly at work on various construction site, building roads, railways and culverts, with a quick break at the start of June to visit the Snowy Mountains. Thus I have been outside a great deal and I am looking more weatherbeaten than usual! I have managed to complete the latest draft of my current project and send that off for editing, and in between writing, sitework and the very occasional social event, I read these seven books and this is what I thought of them.

The Tomb of Dragons – Katherine Addison

This is the final? installment in the Cemeteries of Amalo series of novellas, and unfortunately my least favourite so far. This follows the continuing adventures of the cleric Thara Celehar, who has lost his ability to communicate with the dead and is seeking a new purpose. Several of the loose ends and slow burns that were begun in the previous two books were wrapped up so bluntly and against what I had expected that I almost missed them, and I didn't particularly enjoy the dragon story arc, which took the protagonist out of Amalo for a lot of time in what was already a short book. I always enjoy Addison's reading and I am sure I will re-read this book, perhaps when read as one complete saga it will be more coherent.

The Goblin Emperor – Katherine Addison

Having had a very abrupt end to Tomb of Dragons I decided I wasn't ready to leave Osreth and picked up the first and best of the books for a fifth? sixth? re-read. I absolutely love this book and wil continue to re-read it probably every year forever. I still discover more things to enjoy about it, and my affection for the characters only grows. If you're not familiar then please read this! It's about the youngest and forgotten son of the Emperor of the Elflands, who suddenly becomes ruler after his family perishes in a zeppelin accident. It's magical and I love it.

The Everlasting – Alix E Harrow

This is the last of the books on the Hugo Slate for this year and I can absolutely see why it was nominated. This is a brilliant complex fantasy of a nation building knight and the weedy historian who travels through time to write her story. It's talking about nationalism, conflict, stories, and at the heart is a really wonderful love story and a perfectly excellent villain. File this one under books I wish I'd written!

Long Live Evil – Sarah Rees Brennan

 I was gifted an arc of this book, which my friend promptly borrowed, and then we both forgot its existence for eighteen months before it was rediscovered and returned to me! So I had forgotten why I was excited to read it, and having read more romantasy since I originally received it and decided it's not a genre for me, I was much less keen. However I had run to the bottom of my physical tbr, and needed something to read in the bath so I picked it up. And I loved it.

I can't really understand how it happened! I was paging slowly through the start, getting used to the snarky narrative voice of Rae, the cancer patient who falls into her favourite fantasy series, laughing here and there at a line, rolling my eyes at the over the top names and titles. Then there was a scene which almost broke me - a musical number written in to the text. And then suddenly I was in love with these characters, I understood them and I cared for them! I wanted them to pull through, to get better or worse, and to bend the world to their will. I rocketed through the last two thirds of the book and then I was done and shopping for the sequel. A great, fun book.

The Tyranny of Faith – Richard Swan

 From romantasy to grimantasy (trademarking that) with the second in Richard Swan's Empire of the Wolf series. I happened to be chatting to Richard a while ago and he mentioned this was his favourite in the series and so far I agree! It takes everything from the first book and builds on it, the world just explodes outwards, and the characters develop within it. I'll probably wait a few months before starting the final installment as I like to spread out a series but I could very easily dive straight in.

O Pioneers! – Willa Cather

There's a niche in my reading life for books I can read on site. These need to be ebooks that I can load onto my work tablet, short enough that I can finish in a day or two of dipping in and out, and simple enough for the aforementioned dipping. O Pioneers turns out to fill all three. Cather's American classic of pioneer farmers in Nebraska follows Alexandra Bergson from childhood to later life as she builds her land from prairie to a profitable farm. Mostly I enjoyed this book, it was readable and the characters were well drawn and engaging. The fly in the soup for me (apart from the obvious lack of any indigenous presence or discussion) was Alexandra's final chapters where she reckons with a hideous act of domestic violence and ends up blaming the victims. I understand this book was published in 1913 but I just do not believe that the Alexandra we knew for the first 80% of the novel, kind, clever, driven, responsible, would react like this.

Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

I am on a quest to re-read classics that I last read as a child or young teen and next up is Austen's debut! Having absolutely devoured P&P in May I was excited to pick this up again. Unfortunately I didn't like it half so much! While the writing remains excellent and the plot is certainly fun, I struggled with the desire to give every single character a slap! This is an understandable reaction to the world-class villainy of Willoughby, Lucy Steele and Fanny & John Dashwood, and I will allow that Marianne is a literal child and give her a pass on being an idiotic teenager (she's very Lydia Bennett). Elinor, however, is supposed to be the sensible heroine, and she is also just so irritating! I also bought into the love stories a lot less as we don't see enough of it to really understand what Edward and Elinor see in each other, and any reason for Brandon to like Marianne other than her youth and looks. I was still mad at Edward for building up a relationship with Elinor when he was committed elsewhere, and furious with the entire cast when they decided Marianne was to be given to Brandon as a reward.

I am reasonably sure I am missing a lot of the satirical context of the book, and I will scratch around for some criticism to read. Next on my list is Emma and then hopefully Persuasion.