Whew, what a month! I’ve been ill, but even more disruptive was that we MOVED HOUSE! As I type, I am currently surrounded by TOWERS of boxes – how on earth do we accumulate so much stuff??? But the new house is wonderful (you should see our yard!) and throughout all the chaos there has been some seriously wonderful reading!

ARCs Received

SO MANY INCREDIBLY EXCITING ARCS! Several of these are on my Unmissable SFF of 2025 list, but the others look fantastic too. (Although alas, I’ve already DNFed The Gentleman and His Vowsmith. Not for me!) And of course, I SHRIEKED when Saint Death’s Herald appeared in my inbox – I’ve been checking for it every day, multiple times a day, but an amazing publicity person sent it to me in-between my daily checks!

Read

18 books read this month – more than November! Impressive, considering how busy I’ve been! And the vast majority of these were phenomenal – Sonata Form was a deep, meaty read with dragons and Welsh-inspired worldbuilding; Heatstroke Heartbeat pivoted and was very different from the previous book in the series, but ripped my heart out repeatedly; The Wolf and the Wild King I only found out about at the last minute, through KA Doore’s round-up of 2024 Queer Adult SFF, but it was beautiful, intimately mythic; I felt a little betrayed by The Ragpicker’s ending, but it’s still a post-apocalyptic masterpiece; Saint Death’s Herald was a sparkling, fizzy rollercoaster that broke me and put me back together kintsugi-style; and The Witch Roads, while imperfect, I devoured in 24 hours while in a lot of pain and moving house, so! I think that speaks for itself!

Powder and Feathers was a very unconventional tome, kind of Dark Cosy slice-of-life? Hades Calculus put the Greek gods in charge of a domed city on an un-terraformed planet, with mechas and a LOT of queerness, and I enjoyed it way more than I expected to! Kimmy was super fucked-up, but undeniably excellent.

Plus many wonderful rereads – the highlights being Saint Death’s Daughter, of course (what excellent timing that I was rereading it when Saint Death’s Herald appeared!); In the Night Garden, Catherynne Valente’s Arabic Nights-esque stories-within-stories jewelled puzzle box, was every bit as breathtaking as it was the first time I read it; and The Feast Makers had me punching the air and cheering at 2am – such a perfect goodbye to one of my favourite trilogies!

Reviewed

I didn’t get nearly as much writing done as I wished to, but considering how hectic December was, I’m at peace with that.

DNF-ed

A new record for DNFs! Fifteen in one month, jeez. Plenty of these weren’t objectively bad, though; Lady Eve’s Last Con and The Enchanted Lies of Celeste Artois were both excellent, but I just wasn’t clicking with them, and Kalyna the Cutthroat and My Darling Dreadful Thing will both wow the right reader!

ARCs Outstanding

Woo, down to only 21 outstanding arcs! That’s a nice drop from last month’s 32!

Unmissable SFF Updates

I added the last Unmissables to the 2024 list – my last few 2024 reads that I wish everybody knew about! – and I had fun running the stats on how that list worked out. (Spoiler: I am bad at predicting which books I’ll love!)

How did my predictions/anticipated reads for December go? I declared five books Unmissable for this month, and–

• three were DNFs (Rebel Blade, Hammajang Luck, and North Is the Night)
• one I haven’t gotten to yet (Sister Snake)
• one was a four-star read (Infernal Bargains)

So again, another month of very flawed predictions!

And the 2025 Unmissable list is LIVE!

Misc

I had fun running the stats on 2024’s Unmissable list as a whole, even if it very much underlined that I am pretty terrible at predicting unmissables. OH WELL. It’s still a lot of fun to try!

And of course, I published my Best SFF of 2024, as well as my favourite Backlist SFF that I read this year!

Kila put together a database of queer SFF releases coming out in 2025 – I strongly recommend checking it out, and keeping an eye on it going forward, because they’re also including self-pubbed and indie releases, and it can be so hard to hear about those! You can message Kila on bluesky if you know of any books that could be added – including your own, if you’re an author!

Looking Forward

2025 is starting off strong – we’ve got a new Wayward Children book, a standalone from Nnedi Okorafor, baby dragons, and Appalachian magic! Lightfall and We Lived on the Horizon both caught my eye, but I haven’t seen any reviews from anyone I trust yet. Fingers crossed!

Happy New Year, everyone! May 2025 be good to all of us.