The River Has Roots

Amal El-Mohtar
Completed 6/16/2026, Reviewed 6/17/2026
5 stars

This book was so much better than El-Mohtar’s This is How You Lose the Time War.  The prose is sumptuous like in Time War, but it doesn’t distract from the plot.  The story is devastating and beautiful.  It’s about the bond between two sisters whose job is to sing to the Willows along the river to maintain the portal between the human and fae worlds.  The magic system is bizarre; it is called the Grammer.  And the ending is sad, but hopeful.  This book has already won the 2025 Nebula for Novella and is a 2026 Hugo nominee for the same.  This is turning out to be a tough year for this category as the stories are all marvelous.

Esther and Ysabel have a very tight bond.  Their family, the Hawthornes, have been singing the Willows for generations, a job which now falls on the sisters.  Their voices are unmatched, particularly when they sing together.  Esther, being the older, has a local man interested in marrying her.  He owns the next property over and thinks the match would strengthen the claim on the keeping of the Willows and the portal.  However, Esther does not like Samuel Pollard at all.  She is in love with Rin, a faerie that she and Ysabel met when they accidently wandered through the Willows.  They were saved by Agnes Crow, a grammarian who was wandering through the fae lands.  Just when Esther convinces Rin to live with Esther and her family as her lover, Pollard shows up full of anger and resentment.  The ensuing chaos from that encounter ends tragically, but that is not the end of the story. (But no spoilers so I’ll leave you hanging 😊)

This is one of those books filled with tragic events, but still has a heartwarming feel to it.  It emphasizes the bond between Esther and Ysabel, but also supports the bringing of Rin into the mix.  The relationships are very strong, although they were just short of being problematic and maybe too co-dependent.  But it makes Pollard’s actions all the more devastating.  While the magic is very esoteric, the author has it developed enough that it makes sense, even if you don’t understand it.

The character I liked most was Agnes Crow.  She is another grammarian, someone who wields the speaking and singing magic.  She reminded me a bit of Tom Bombadil from Tolkien.  She also reminded me of a rune reader I know here in Portland, so I pictured her with a wild grey perm, soft flowy black fabrics, and a mischievous smile.  She is funny, whimsical, and very serious when needed.  

This is another novella on the shorter side, so I can’t discuss too much without spoilers.  Suffice it to say, the book was gripping.  Everything happens so fast, but it flows very well.  I read this book in a short day, although it took me a few days to get the review written up.  I can’t tell you how much of a difference it was from Time War.  It’s like night and day.  This book made me feel all cozy in the end, my favorite feeling.  But this isn’t a cozy read as the events in the middle are tragic, indeed.  It hit all the right emotional buttons for me to give it a five star rating.

Murder by Memory

Olivia Waite
Completed 6/15/2026, Reviewed 6/17/2026
4 stars

I’m usually not a big fan of noir detective mysteries, but this one had a great twist.  It takes place on a luxury line spaceship called the Fairweather where you can keep coming back in new bodies when the old one died.  Your mind is regularly backed up in case of emergency resurrection.  I was impressed by the world building and that all the characters were gay or lesbian.  It wasn’t an issue story; it was integrated pretty seamlessly into the characters and plot.  And the idea of a spaceship ride to eternity was pretty cool as well.  This is another nominee for the 2026 Hugo Novella category.  It wasn’t the best, but it’s a strong contender.

Dorothy Gentleman is a detective on board the Fairweather.  She is awakened by its computer during a magnetic storm to find she is in Gloria Vowell’s body.  The computer, known as Ferry, acts drunk due to the storm’s interference.  It conveys to her that Janet Dodds has been murdered on this utopian ship.  Also, her own memory backup has been destroyed.  It takes a while to figure out, partly because of the drunk computer, that Gloria may have been the murderer.  But is she?  Dorothy doesn’t have Gloria’s memory but finds out she had a business partnership with Janet.  She suspects her programming genius nephew Rutherford may have done something to the memory storage library, inadvertently causing a bug that’s destroying people’s files.  It turns out Janet’s memory is also erased.  Lastly, there’s the owner of a yarn store named Violet who turns out to be Gloria’s wife.  She’s jealous of Gloria and Janet’s business relationship.  But without the memory of Gloria and Janet, she must piece together the murder the old-fashioned way.  

Dorothy narrates this story in first person.  Dorothy is an excellent gumshoe character.  She’s also a feisty woman in her late fifties, although she is currently in a younger woman’s body.  Her methodical approach to solving the murder is very entertaining.  The blurb for the book compares her to Miss Marple, though I’ve never read any Agatha Christie.  What I liked best about her was how she tried to get information and confessions by appearing to people as Gloria and not giving away who she really is.  When she goes to the yarn store to see how it’s tied to the deceased, she meets Violet who uses a classic noir line, “You’ve got some nerve, haven’t you.”  It made me chuckle.  

I loved this book.  It’s well conceived and well written.  It’s short for a novella, just over eighty pages.  It doesn’t get lost in prose or personality.  The mystery is tight and the big reveal blew me away.  Some people say “If you take a book and remove all the science and you still have a story, it’s not really science fiction.”  Well, in this case, the science is directly tied to the mystery.  It’s not just a murder mystery set in space.  I give this story a strong four stars out of five. 

Cinder House

Freya Marske
Completed 6/14/2026, Reviewed 6/15/2026
5 stars

There are many takes on classic fairy tales.  This time, it’s Cinderella, and Ella is a ghost haunting a house.  Despite being another retelling, I was blown away by the complexity.  It was smart, funny at times, and quite intense.  This is another nominee for the 2026 Hugo Novella.  I think it deserves the nomination just for making the trope feel fresh and exciting.  

Ella was murdered at the age of sixteen.  She wakes up to find herself being a ghost haunting her own house.  It takes a while, but soon she is visible, but only to her stepmother and stepsisters.  They demand she do all the housework for them, just like when she was alive.  She tries to refuse, but her spectral body goes right to the assigned task.  It’s as if she is somehow bound to the house.  Several years pass and she is still the maid for her stepfamily, but she yearns for the senses of being alive, to touch, to dance.  One day in the market, a woman selling charms sees her and makes her dreams come true, for a price.  You may think you know the ending, but it is so much wilder than you’d expect.

I think what impressed me the most was the complexity of the world building, including the characters.  It reminded me of world building of Gregory Maguire’s “Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister.”  Cinder House may not go quite as deep, it still created a believable world with very realistic characters, including the “Handsome Prince.”  They had a lot of depth, and considering this is a novella, had good character arcs.  The one exception is the older stepsister named Greta.  She has the personality of an aspiring serial killer.  She tortures ghostly Ella to no end and seems bent on completely eradicating her.  Greta’s character arc goes from horrible to terrorizing with no believable reason, at least I didn’t quite believe it.  Nevertheless, she fits into the story well.  

I give this book five stars out of five.  I found myself getting so excited when each box of the original story got checked off.  Not all of them are checked off, but more than enough to feel satisfied that this was a very imaginative work.  I should mention this comes with a spiciness warning.  As long as Marske doesn’t just stick with fairy tale retellings, I look forward to seeing what else she produces.

Automatic Noodle

Annalee Newitz
Completed 6/12/2026, Reviewed 6/13/2026
5 stars

I had only read Autonomous by Newitz before this.  I felt meh about it.  This book began that way.  I had trouble connecting with and understanding the operation of the robot main characters.  But that all goes away in about fifty pages.  This being a novella, that’s about the first quarter of the book.  It was worth sticking with.  What we end up with is a marvelous fable about nominally free robots trying to start a noodle business in a world where California has seceded from the Union and the civil war it caused has just ended.  Once it gets going, it’s full of mystery and intrigue as the robots try to uncover the online smear campaign against them and work to build a client base.  This is the first nominee of the 2026 Best Novella Hugo category that I haven’t read yet.  

Four robots start up after months of being shut down during the war between the US and California.  They are unaware of everything and need to catch up.  They realize the owner of the restaurant where they worked has taken off and atmospheric rivers are flooding the streets.  Without work, they get no coin and they can’t pay their personal debts.  They come up with a plan to start a noodle shop when the rains stop, specializing only in biang biang noodles.  After the terrible ingredients and conditions they’ve been working with, they want to create a top tier noodle with the best ingredients and the most expert preparation.  They turn out to be a hit.  Their excitement though doesn’t last when online trolls start bashing their place, spreading robophobia and condemning it for being run by robots.  Dejected, they come up with a plan to rely on their word-of-mouth success while investigating the troll who started the campaign.

The toughest part of the book for me was getting the robots names and personalities down.  There’s Staybehind, the former military robot; Sweetie, the robot with a human appearance; Cayenne, the octobot with the ability to taste; and Hands, a food prepper and cooking bot.  Also early on, a human employee named Robles returns asking for food and shelter and offering to help in any way to pay them back.  I had trouble remembering which robot was talking at any given point.  I think that’s because most of the time they were texting over wifi and the conversations were often between all of them.  Somehow it just didn’t connect for that first quarter of the book.  Eventually I got it.  Staybehind was the naysayer in the project, and the troll investigator.  Hands had a severe problem with depression.  Sweetie had lost skin on her face and decided to stop pretending to be human anymore.  Cayenne was a liberated bot who became best friends with Hands on their first job.   So it all worked out, but I feel like I missed out on something while I was lost in the beginning.  

There is an important point worth noting about the plot.  The robophobia has just been legally outlawed in California.  Robots are “free”, though they do not have the right to vote, own property, own a business, have a bank account, etc.  That’s why their business is so tenuous.  They made up a human to be the successor to the original owner.  So effectively, they are a “ghost” restaurant --- there are no humans running the place.  Robles is their only “cover.”  

I have to say, the prose and world building is pretty great.  But the real star of the story is its relatability for anyone who feels oppressed.  Women, blacks, the queer community, and anyone else will get some of great lines spoken, thought, or texted in this book.  Yeah, you can say this is a book with an agenda, but doesn’t any great story have an agenda, or better yet, a moral?  I give this book five stars out of five.  It smacked me in the face, this is how we’ve survived and will continue to survive.  Stick together, be yourself, and stand out.  Happy Pride!

The Long Game

Rachel Reid
Completed 6/9/2026, Reviewed 6/12/2026
5 stars

This book made me feel so many emotions: joy, fear, pain, exhilaration.  It brings back Ilya and Shane from Heated Rivalry into the foreground again, with Troy and Dallas from Role Model and a few other characters showing up in featured scenes.  It was a joy to read, but also very honest about the fear of coming out.  I remember those days in my late teens and early 20s; I had both the exhilaration and terror of coming out to the people important in my life.   This book made those memories bubble up as I read about Ilya and Shane.  It’s good to remember this when people ask “Why do we need Pride?”

Shane and Ilya have been together for about eleven years, give or take.  They’ve been together as an official couple for three.  Ilya is getting tired of the hiding and the long periods away.  Shane is too, but terrified of coming out.  Both men are miserable.  This book is told mostly from Ilya’s perspective, so we also know he has been depressed.  He believes that if the two of them come out and get married, it would relieve the depression.  This leads to many discussions and convincing between them, but they both agree it’s time to choose: risk everything and come out or stay in the closet and be guaranteed to stay in the sport they love.

This book sounds like there’s a lot of anxiety being portrayed.  Well, it is.  It comes out in their thoughts and their conversations.  It may sound tedious, but it’s very realistic.  Of course, it is intermixed with a lot of hockey, interactions with other teammates, and of course, the spicy stuff, so it keeps the pace moving quickly.  Except for falling asleep while reading late at night a few times, I read it voraciously.  

The toughest thing for me is that Ilya’s tall, dark, and hairy in the book, but smooth, blond, and about Shane’s height in the TV series.  Other than trying to keep one picture in my head, I’ve really come to like Ilya so much.  I relate more to him as he makes the decision to go to therapy to work on issues in his past and present.  Whereas Shane is an obsessive perfectionist.  I can only relate to that a little (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).  But both characters go through so much emotionally, it’s hard not to empathize with at least some of their struggles.  

I enjoyed this book so thoroughly and deeply, I have to give it five stars out of five.  I know there’s a seventh book coming out soon (ha).  I can’t wait!!  So I looked it up and the release date is…July 2027?!?!?  Aaaaaack!  I guess I’ll suffer and wait.  Really, that’s how much I enjoy this series.  

The Raven Scholar

Antonia Hodgson
Completed 6/5/2026, Reviewed 6/10/2026
5 stars

I didn’t expect to like this book based on the blurb, but I found it incredibly entertaining.  It’s loaded with backstabbing and court politics, not unlike most competition reality shows.  Normally, not my cup of tea.  This book gripped me, with readable prose, an incredibly complex magic and religion, and very well-developed characters.  I loved that they are mostly adults in their 20’s or so, rather than teens.  It’s a doorstopper of a book but enough action to keep the pace pretty high.  This book was nominated for the 2026 Hugo Award.  It has a lot of love in the online review arena, but also several loud detractors.  I can see the argument of the detractors, but I align with those who loved it. 

The book starts out with Yana as a teen.  Her father was a traitor to the Emperor and was executed.  Yana, her mother, sister, and brother have been living under the good graces of the Emperor since.  Out of nowhere, he decides Yana helped her father too much during the uprising and banishes her to certain death.  Then the book picks up with Neema, an intelligent scribe with good penmanship, being tasked by the Emperor with writing the proclamation of exile.  Neema is against this but complies to better her position with the Emperor.  She ends up living with that guilt for the rest of the book.

Some years later, the term for the Emperor is over and the traditional competition to take the throne is set.  It brings in representatives from the eight houses of the religion, named after different animals.  When the Raven competitor is mysteriously killed, Neema is blamed for it, but never actually accused.  Being the second best in Raven class, Neema is assigned to the competition by the Emperor.  She has never trained for it and is sure it’s a death sentence in disguise.  And her competitors include Cain, the boy she grew up with who has since become estranged from her, and Ruko, Yana’s uber-intense surviving brother.  

Neema is interesting.  She is riddled with guilt and self-doubt.  At times, she was very annoying, but I bought into her character 100%.  Within the context of her childhood and education as a Raven, she was so abused and disliked by her classmates and even her instructors that I understood why it took so long for her to start breaking through her own walls.  Sometimes, bullying is so extreme that some people may never break through.  Throughout the book, she steps up to the challenges placed before her and somehow perseveres.  So when she does have the occasional triumph, it’s very satisfying.  

There are a lot of characters in this book.  There are the eight original competitors, there’s the king’s court, Yana’s family, and a host of others.  The thing that’s most remarkable is that despite Neema’s fears, she is a kind and gentle person.  My favorite of the other characters is Benna, the maid assigned to Neema when she becomes a contender.  Beena is keyed into Neema’s goodness and her responses are hysterical and heartfelt.  Cain also has a pretty satisfying character arc.  He goes from being a snarky pain to Neema.  He’s still angry at her for signing Yana’s exile document and leaving him for an assignment with the emperor.  But then, old feelings between Neema and Cain arise and that complicates matters for both of them.  He’s much more likeable than Ruko who seems to be a monstrous machine.

One thing I noticed about this book is that it makes many statements about politics, this being chock full of backstabbing and devious plots.  There is so much going on, to comment on it would be a spoiler.  It’s too bad, because I would have liked to discuss this book with someone as I read it.  The book is all about power and powerlessness.  One would hope the powerful are toppled, but there is at least one sequel.  So yeah, the ending is good, but there’s so much that remains to be dealt with and overcome.  

The prose is decent, nothing too flowery or pretentious.  The star of the book, though, is the world-building.  The religious and magic system is incredibly detailed and interesting.  It was unlike anything I’ve read so far.  It’s what made this book great for me.  It lifted what could have been a tired trope (a reality competition like Survivor or The Hunger Games) into something complex and surprising.  I give this book a five stars out of five.  I surprised myself by really getting into every detail about Neema, the Emperor, Cain, and Ruko and their relationships to each other.  I remember my shock in realizing I kept so much info in my head, including the details of all the competitors.  This book hit me just the right way.  I can’t say this is my number one pick for the Hugo, despite the stars, but I will say that reading it was an intense experience.

The Incandescent

Emily Tesh
Completed 5/26/2026, Reviewed 5/31/2026
5 stars

Fighting demons at a school for magic has become commonplace in the fantasy genre.  Tesh freshens it up in her latest novel which has been nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards this year.  Rather than just being another in this crowded subgenre, this book has the Director of Magic as the main character.  She tries to prevent demon incursions and works day and night to keep the kids and her staff safe.  Tesh creates quite a neat magic system in a world with a complex relationship with demons.  I loved the writing and of course, the MC.  And once again, here is another Hugo nominee that is clustered at the top with the other nominees.  They’ve all been terrific, but this one might just stand out from the others.    

In this book, the story is told from the most powerful professor at the school, Sapphire Walden.  Saffy to most of her colleagues is also the Director of Magic.  Besides the teaching about magic and demons, she is in charge of the whole magic curriculum and the safety of the school and its student.  Walden is dedicated beyond belief.  “It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in work-life balance.  It was just that her career was her life.”  During one of her classes with a small group of seniors, they accidently nearly summon a very powerful demon, nicknamed Old Faithful.  This instance brings in the wrath of the head of Security, Marshall Linda Kenning.  There is a power play between Walden and Kenning, underneath which is some definite attraction.  Nothing kicks into gear until there is an incursion of Old Faithful.  Walden and Kenning attempt to fight this high-order demon, nearly killing themselves in the process.  They do finally reveal their mutual attraction just in time for Kenning to take the blame for the incursion, resign, and return to the private sector.  Now the school is under investigation and many small demons are taking up residence in the magical gap left by Old Faithful.

Walden is a great character; a powerful magician who cares deeply for the school and her students.  However, she is very closed off from her feelings.  On the Meyers Briggs Personality Type Indicator, I’d say she was off the charts ISTJ: reliable, logical, and action-oriented.  Unfortunately, this prevents her recognizing that she has a thing for Kenning and vice-versa until it is too late.  But rather than mourn it, she gets back into her structured day-to-day, keeping tight control on her environment.  I loved this line: “It wasn’t Walden’s fault that Laura Kenning had waited until the middle of a giant demonic incursion to turn out to be competent and beautiful and interested.”  Even when the contracted safety inspector Mark shows up, they begin an affair that she keeps completely separate from her emotions, leaving her to overthink everything.  But this isn’t to say she isn’t self-aware.  She recognizes she has two chances at something different with Mark and Linda Kenning.  “Like bloody buses…nothing for years and then two come along at once.”

The book has many well-developed characters, including the handful of seniors Walden teaches.  Nikki is a ward of the school and the most promising student.  She may even exceed Walden’s capabilities.  Matthias is also a ward of the school, coming from abusive parents.  He’s tongue-tied and shy, but powerful in various ways.  William is an entitled jerk from an old English magical family.  Tries to ride on his good looks and intuition, which is usually wrong.  Aneeta was taking a magic course as an interesting sideline to her education.  These four make up the core of the most gifted students Walden works with.  And just like students who are too smart for their own good, they make a lot of mistakes that Walden has to clean up.  

I must admit, this book may edge out the rest of the 2026 Hugo nominees.  Walden is simply engaging and entertaining.  She is fierce, determined, and protective, even though she crushes her emotions.  The battles with demons are intense.  The setting was pastoral but still has the grit of an urban fantasy.  Tesh has great settings and compelling characters, as I discovered in her 2024 Hugo winning Some Desperate Glory and her World Fantasy Award winning novella, Silver in the Wood.  She’s a great new voice in world of science fiction and fantasy.