APOPHENY

Planetfall series – Emma Newman
(Planetfall, After Atlas, Before Mars, Atlas Alone)
I’m only not giving these books, each one a separate but connected tale, five stars because there’s no real conclusion to the series, and I became so invested that I found this fact deeply frustrating even if realistic. These extremely well written books look, from several different angles, at a human diaspora to a colony planet – from it all going wrong on the new planet, to the dystopia on the Earth left behind.

The Tomb of Dragons – Katherine Addison
The final book of the Cemeteries of Amalo series. I’ve really loved the gentle darkness of these books, following a character whose job it is to read the last moments of a person’s life from their corpse and ‘witness’ them, solving crimes if necessary and confronting their own issues in the process. Books like this are my cosy reads.

Greenwing & Dart series – Victoria Goddard
(Stargazy Pie, Bee Sting Cake, Whiskey Jack, Blackcurrant Fool, Love-in-a-Mist, Plum Duff)
I have so totally fallen in love with Goddard’s Nine Worlds ‘verse. This particular series is based in a setting that is vaguely British regency, one redolent with magic, gods and the fae. The PoV character starts off in a low state, but things improve remarkably for him throughout the books as he and his friends have adventures full of coincidence and unexpected significance.

A Drop of Corruption – Robert Jackson Bennett
The second book in the Shadow of the Leviathan series and just as good as the first. Like the first one, it’s a complex murder mystery set in what I’ve just seen described as a biopunk world, which seems like a good descriptor. This adventure takes the biologically altered protagonist and his even stranger sherlockian boss to the very fringes of the empire, a kind of wild west where they cannot rely on the rules of the empire to structure the investigation.

Ile-Rien books – Martha Wells
(The Element of Fire, Death of the Necromancer, The Wizard Hunters, The Ships of Air, The Gates of Gods)
My reread of the Murderbot books prompted me to explore the author’s back catalogue. These books are the author’s earliest adult work, but nonetheless full of great worldbuilding, characters I care about and well written action. While they lacked some of the polish of later novels, they were very much worth the read, especially the trilogy (the last three books of the list above), which really started to feel like the Wellsian writing I adore.

The Sun Chronicles 1,2 – Kate Elliot
(Unconquerable Sun, Furious Heaven)
I wasn’t sure what to expect of these books, but I’m so glad I read them. This epic of interplanetary politics and a war of expansion concentrates mostly on a bunch of interesting and likeable characters that circle like satellites around the titular Sun, the daughter of the Queen Marshall, destined to take the martial progress of her mother and pretty much explode their territory outwards. Her story is, I believe, loosely based on that of Alexander the Great. Lovely writing, tight plotting, and I’m glad we also get to follow a character on the other side of the war, just to keep having our reality checked. Really looking forward to part 3.

Hemlock and Silver – T Kingfisher
I normally don’t have much time for fairytale retellings, but by the time I realised I was reading one here, I was already hooked (and it has started me reading a series of Kingfisher’s fairytale novels). The MC is an expert in poisons and their antidotes, and is brought in by a well-meaning king to try to cure his daughter, Snow, who suffers from a mystery wasting illness. The plot reminds me of Coraline in places, but is ultimately its own thing.

The Raven and the Reindeer – T Kingfisher
My last book of 2025, and my favourite so far of Kingfisher’s takes on classic fairytales. In this take on the Snow Queen, the narrative largely follows that of the original HCA story, but I enjoy where it differs a great deal, especially the shape-changing, the lasting corvid friendship and the sapphic romance.