Fantasy

A character-focused month: July 2026 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Climate Fiction, Creative Non Fiction, Eco-criticism, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Queer Literature, Science-Fiction

The Mars House by Natasha Pulley

The start of this book is absolutely fantastic and it had me hooked in from page one. In a near future of climate collapse, January, a ballet dancer in his early thirties, is forced to leave London and his job after a terrible flood that renders the city impossible to live in. By force, he becomes a climate refugee from an Earth that is becoming too hot to be habitable. He ends up as a refugee in Mars’ only human colony: the city of Tharsis.

Tharsis has existed for generations on the red planet, initially supported by China but now mostly as an independent state. Now, here I became fascinated with the author’s research on what human life in Mars could be like. Because gravity works different in Mars, Pulley’s characters have evolved to be much taller but also incredibly fragile when compared to the Earthborn humans. Which means that when an Earth dweller as much as pushes a Mars dweller the Mars dweller may end up with broken bones or even dead. (I have read in other reviews such as this one that this is not how it would work exactly if we were following the laws of physics; but for someone who has no knowledge of physics all of these ideas seemed believable plot-wise!)

This creates an interesting dilemma. As a refugee in Mars, January is seen as a threat to the people native to the planet. He’s forced to wear a ‘cage’ (a metal device which is a sort of external skeleton attached to his body) which makes him slower and less likely to hit someone by mistake. On top of this, the Mars government offers refugees a process to get ‘naturalised’ which includes surgery and other invasive methods that have very negative health impacts and leave people from Earth physically disabled.

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Academic hell, money issues and some self-help: March 2026 Reads

Book Review, Creative Non Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Speculative Fiction

The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: a memoir by Neko Case

I love Case’s music, which I discovered by chance around 2023 after listening to her being interviewed in The Witch Wave podcast with Pam Grossman. I’m specially fascinated by her mysterious lyrics, often based on her own personal life, so I was intrigued to read this. Interestingly enough, Case has admitted that she was more interested in writing fiction (I would actually be curious to read a novel by her!) but during the Covid-19 pandemic she, like many other musicians, found herself struggling financially because she couldn’t tour and so getting commissioned to write this memoir really helped her.

Case definitely has a story to tell that goes way beyond her experience as a musician, though. In fact, most of this memoir focuses on her unusual (and disturbing) childhood. Her parents who had her in their teens, were not prepared for children at all, which sadly meant they were not only neglectful but also abusive to her only child. For example, when Case is really young, her mother leaves the family and to do so fakes her own death. In a bizarre turn of events, her father goes along with this lie, gathering the family to have a wake for his wife who has presumably died of cancer. Case goes through mourning just to get her mother ‘back’ a year or so after the event. I mean, that alone would had made me go mad as a child.

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Strange worlds, fungi, and raw landscapes: February 2026 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Climate Fiction, Creative Non Fiction, Eco-criticism, Fantasy, Science-Fiction, Short Story Collection, Speculative Fiction, Thrutopia

Eve by Una

A gorgeously dark graphic novel. I admired this author already – having read her debut, Becoming Unbecoming, which had a great impact on me. This is her most recent work and far more complex in terms of the art’s rendition. The story is still set in the north of England (where I live). It imagines a bleak near future in which climate collapse and the spread of far-right politics dominate the country. Eve, the main character, is born in the 2020s – a decade of great upheaval – from an English mother and an immigrant father who is a refugee in the UK. The story follows Eve’s upbringing alongside that of two of her closest friends, Si and Ruby.

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New Ideas: January 2026 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Creative Non Fiction, Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Queer Literature, Thrutopia

Spent by Alison Bechdel

I love Bechdel’s work so I saved this book as a treat and I read it all on one go during New Year. It didn’t disappoint. The art is incredible detailed as always (specially the cats, look for the cheeky cats in almost every frame!). Also, this time Bechdel treats us to a fully-coloured work which makes the small community she portrays here all the more vibrant.

There’s something distinctive about this book. Whereas a lot of Bechdel’s work is autobiographical (i.e. Fun Home, Are You My Mother? and The Secret to Superhuman Strength) what Bechdel does here is something different. The main character is called Alison and looks exactly like her. Her partner is called Holly and looks exactly like the Holly from her other works who we know is the author’s partner. However, Bechdel classifies this work as fiction from the get go. For example, the Alison of this work became famous after publishing a graphic novel titled Death and Taxidermy about her father who was a taxidermist artist (so, no Fun Home and no father working in the funeral business). She doesn’t have two younger brothers but an older sister called Sheila. And this graphic novel is not written in the first person but in the third person.

I’m intrigued but also excited – and creatively stimulated – by observing these approaches. Coincidentally, I also read another book this month that plays with the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, Soldiers of Salamis, which I discuss below. But let’s go back to Bechdel’s new work. Spent tells the story of a small community in Vermont in which established graphic novelist Alison and her partner Holly have decided to start a pigmy goat sanctuary. Alison’s work has recently been adapted into a very popular TV series. However, life is not as easy as her friends think: it’s actually excruciating for Alison to see her own life adapted into TV. Also, the publisher who has made an offer for her new work is also involved with some far-right politics that go against everything Alison believes in so she has to decide between her career and her ideals on this next step of her professional journey.

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Best Reads of 2025

Book Review, Books, Climate Fiction, Creative Non Fiction, Crime Fiction, Eco-criticism, Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Historical Fiction, Horror, Literary Fiction, Queer Literature, Science-Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Speculative historical fiction, Thrutopia, Weird Fiction

This was a hard year for me – I was ill for a lot of it which impacted on my reading speed. During the second half of December, however, I decided to consciously stop checking social media and make my life much more analogue. Surprising no one, this was the month I read the most – and also when I mentally felt the healthiest I’ve been in a long while. So this is something I’m hoping to embrace in 2026 – less time in the digital sphere and more time with a book in my hands…

Books that blew my mind:

The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K Le Guin

Very late to the party with this one, I know, but it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. Cosmic horror, philosophy and religion. Fantasy at its best. We follow a teenager who has been hailed as the high-priestess of an ancient religion. Who has been educated to believe she’s one of the most important humans on Earth – but actually, does she have any power at all to decide her own fate? The descriptions of the maze of caves under the tombs of Atuan had be dizzy with fear and wonder.

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Families are complicated: December 2025 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Climate Fiction, Creative Non Fiction, Crime Fiction, Eco-criticism, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Horror, Literary Fiction, Nature Writing

Motherhood by Sheila Heti

I’ve wanted to read this book for a long time, so I jumped in glee when I discovered my library had the audiobook. It is narrated by the author (which is always enjoyable) so I borrowed it as quickly as I could. I listened to it in a few days (it’s a short one) through the darkness and rain of early December in the north.

I loved it and hated it – this was one book to inspire lots of feelings in me, often contradictory. I found the author’s voice annoying yet compelling. She narrates this book using, partly, the I-ching – she asks questions to it as if she was speaking to a god of sorts, or the universe, or a superior intelligence. This is amusing and strange – because, of course, she always tries to make sense of the answers she gets, which sound serene, loving, rarely random.

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Dystopias and Introspection: September 2025 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Creative Non Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Literary Fiction, Short Story Collection, Weird Fiction

The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K Le Guin

This is the second book in the Earthsea series that I started reading in August this year. I loved this second instalment even more than the first one, if that is even possible. Whereas A Wizard of Earthsea was more classical fantasy, this book had some horror and weird fiction features intertwined that I particularly enjoyed.

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Travels through space and time: August 2025 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Creative Non Fiction, Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Horror, Literary Fiction, Queer Literature, Science-Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Weird Fiction
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Here by Richard McGuire

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When I worked at the bookshop, we had a graphic novel that I would check on occasion. Its concept fascinated me. If you don’t know it yet, Here tells a story through double-page illustrations of the same space – a room in a house – spanning years, centuries, and millennia. For example, if you are watching the space millennia ago, there is only plants, maybe some strange prehistoric animal lurking in the background. In the future, water floods everywhere. Or we may get glimpses of a futuristic society. The present time focuses mainly on the twentieth century, allowing you to see the same family grow and evolve in the same space.

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Books I can’t shut up about: May 2025 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Climate Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Literary Fiction, Queer Literature, Science-Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Weird Fiction

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

This is the second (and final part) of the Six of Crows duology. I enjoyed it as much as the first one, especially when it came to the evolution of some of the characters from the previous book, such as Wylan, the disowned son of the wealthy merchant Van Eck. Something I loved about this series is how dark it can get, but also, how it also contains some hilarious moments (such as the gang kidnapping Van Eck’s young wife, who turns out to be a very bad singer who loves to sing…and torments them all). Another character that I enjoyed getting to know more of in this second book was Jasper – a gunslinger with a great sense of humour (and also, a gambling issue). His relationship with his father is both sad and tender (he’s been spending his father’s money while pretending he’s a university student, whereas in reality he’s just devoted to a life of crime as a member of Kaz’s band).

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Reading in transit: April 2025 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Creative Non Fiction, Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Queer Literature, Spanish

Un Apartamento en Urano (An Apartment in Urano) by Paul B Preciado

Since last year, it seems that I’ve been on a self-imposed quest to read Preciado’s entire backlist, and what can I say? I’m loving the journey, and I can’t stop talking about how great he is as a writer and philosopher. This book is a special one, as it’s a collection of short articles that Preciado originally published in French in the newspaper Libération from 2013 to 2018. This is, coincidentally, the time when Preciado decided to transition and started using a male name and male pronouns, so many of these articles – which he refers to as ‘crónicas del cruce’ (‘chronics of a crossing’) – document it. But Preciado is not only experiencing a gender transition – as he writes, he goes through an important romantic break-up, he travels from France to Spain to Greece and many other countries in between. He reflects deeply on the idea of belonging to a place (and a gender).

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