Bookshelf: 2026 Edition
Jul. 8th, 2026 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
citrakayahBetter late with this than never, I guess. Current book count: 13.
Fiction:
Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky -- Latest in the Children of... series. After feeling that Children of Memory was lackluster, I enjoyed this book much more. We got more of a look at nonhuman psychology than we did for Children of Memory, though
Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky -- Imagine made a solarpunk dystopia. That is basically this book. Humans enjoy beautiful ecologically friendly cities that effortlessly blend the built environment and greenery. All their needs are fulfilled. The needs of the "uplifted" animals who support them, however, are not--they are literally collared by what corporation owns them and have to work themselves to the bones just to afford the drugs they're dependent on. You could read this as a reference to modern class issues, though I don't think it was particularly intended as allegorical. Either way I enjoyed it.
Hemlock and Silver by T. Kingfisher -- The second of Kingfisher's books I read this year (I started Wolf Worm, but didn't have the time to finish it and felt kind of squeamish about it). While I preferred Snake-Eater, I liked this one a lot too. Kingfisher is always good at creating very original fantasy, with compelling characters, and this was no exception.
River of Bones and Other Stories by Rebecca Roanhorse -- Enjoyable, but kind of one note at times. I like Roanhorse's longer works better.
Rosewater by Tade Thompson -- Been meaning to read this one forever--it's apparently a classic of Nigerian science fiction. Having read it, I found it... a bit middling, to be honest. It's well-written, it's just grittier than I tend to like. I didn't really get into it for the same reason I don't really tend to like cyberpunk.
Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar -- Excellent imagery and metaphor. The stories are short, so while not all of them were my cup of tea it wasn't too hard to read them all.
Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher -- Really liked this one. This is the first novel by T. Kingfisher I've read that does much with the Southwest, so it was interesting to later read Hemlock and Silver and see what's clearly a fantastical Southwest.
The Fox Hunt by Caitlin Breeze -- One of my favorite books so far of the year. I'm a sucker for anything involving characters getting a little more feral, and the transformation of the main character into a vulpine fae was well done. The ending set up for the expected sequel well, so I'm looking forward to that.
The Rose Field by Philip Pullman -- Difficult to follow at times. There were dropped plot points and plot points that were never fully explained. The end of the book is not conclusive. But in retrospect I believe that was part of the point, because an important part of the book is the importance of the imagination and unsolved mysteries to the psyche.
Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman -- An extremely depressing eco-dystopia where killing species is as simple as paying a modest fine that can be neatly priced into a corporation's operating expenses. Reading it wasn't fun, but it was a good book that hits a whole lot harder after hearing about how in the wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster, Exxon tried to make sure that payouts for environmental damages would be easily predictable, relatively low, and easily factored into their budgets.
Non-Fiction:
Coyote at the Kitchen Door: Living with Wildlife in Suburbia by Stephen DeStefano -- Probably a good book for beginners, but not particularly interesting for someone like me who has a background in science. The illustrations were pretty nice, though.
In Amazonia: A Natural History by Hugh Raffles -- For a long time, I've been interested in pre-Columbian Amazonian civilizations. Unfortunately, this book is not about that. It's about post-Columbian ecological change, mostly due to hydraulic engineering, in one community. Undoubtedly a good book but not what I wanted.
The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird by Bruce Barcott -- An informative look at the struggle around a hydroelectric dam in Belize. Raises some interesting questions about colonialism, but also how anti-colonial rhetoric sometimes gets used to shove through developmental projects that are sweetheart deals for foreign corporations even over substantial local opposition.
Fiction:
Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky -- Latest in the Children of... series. After feeling that Children of Memory was lackluster, I enjoyed this book much more. We got more of a look at nonhuman psychology than we did for Children of Memory, though
Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky -- Imagine made a solarpunk dystopia. That is basically this book. Humans enjoy beautiful ecologically friendly cities that effortlessly blend the built environment and greenery. All their needs are fulfilled. The needs of the "uplifted" animals who support them, however, are not--they are literally collared by what corporation owns them and have to work themselves to the bones just to afford the drugs they're dependent on. You could read this as a reference to modern class issues, though I don't think it was particularly intended as allegorical. Either way I enjoyed it.
Hemlock and Silver by T. Kingfisher -- The second of Kingfisher's books I read this year (I started Wolf Worm, but didn't have the time to finish it and felt kind of squeamish about it). While I preferred Snake-Eater, I liked this one a lot too. Kingfisher is always good at creating very original fantasy, with compelling characters, and this was no exception.
River of Bones and Other Stories by Rebecca Roanhorse -- Enjoyable, but kind of one note at times. I like Roanhorse's longer works better.
Rosewater by Tade Thompson -- Been meaning to read this one forever--it's apparently a classic of Nigerian science fiction. Having read it, I found it... a bit middling, to be honest. It's well-written, it's just grittier than I tend to like. I didn't really get into it for the same reason I don't really tend to like cyberpunk.
Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar -- Excellent imagery and metaphor. The stories are short, so while not all of them were my cup of tea it wasn't too hard to read them all.
Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher -- Really liked this one. This is the first novel by T. Kingfisher I've read that does much with the Southwest, so it was interesting to later read Hemlock and Silver and see what's clearly a fantastical Southwest.
The Fox Hunt by Caitlin Breeze -- One of my favorite books so far of the year. I'm a sucker for anything involving characters getting a little more feral, and the transformation of the main character into a vulpine fae was well done. The ending set up for the expected sequel well, so I'm looking forward to that.
The Rose Field by Philip Pullman -- Difficult to follow at times. There were dropped plot points and plot points that were never fully explained. The end of the book is not conclusive. But in retrospect I believe that was part of the point, because an important part of the book is the importance of the imagination and unsolved mysteries to the psyche.
Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman -- An extremely depressing eco-dystopia where killing species is as simple as paying a modest fine that can be neatly priced into a corporation's operating expenses. Reading it wasn't fun, but it was a good book that hits a whole lot harder after hearing about how in the wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster, Exxon tried to make sure that payouts for environmental damages would be easily predictable, relatively low, and easily factored into their budgets.
Non-Fiction:
Coyote at the Kitchen Door: Living with Wildlife in Suburbia by Stephen DeStefano -- Probably a good book for beginners, but not particularly interesting for someone like me who has a background in science. The illustrations were pretty nice, though.
In Amazonia: A Natural History by Hugh Raffles -- For a long time, I've been interested in pre-Columbian Amazonian civilizations. Unfortunately, this book is not about that. It's about post-Columbian ecological change, mostly due to hydraulic engineering, in one community. Undoubtedly a good book but not what I wanted.
The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird by Bruce Barcott -- An informative look at the struggle around a hydroelectric dam in Belize. Raises some interesting questions about colonialism, but also how anti-colonial rhetoric sometimes gets used to shove through developmental projects that are sweetheart deals for foreign corporations even over substantial local opposition.
