2026/130: Uprooted — Naomi Novik

I knew, suddenly, why the Dragon took a girl from the valley. ... We were of the valley. Born in the valley, of families planted too deep to leave even when they knew their daughter might be taken; raised in the valley, drinking of whatever power also fed the Wood. [loc. 4176]

Agnieszka, seventeen, is certain that her friend Kasia will be chosen by the sorcerer known as the Dragon: will spend ten years in his stone tower, and will afterwards leave the valley where they've grown up. Agnieszka -- who is clumsy, ungainly, prone to dishevelment -- is extremely surprised to be chosen instead. 

But it turns out that she's a witch: and though her powers are quite unlike the Dragon's, he's obliged to teach her... though not to be kind or patient with her. Most of what Agnieszka learns is from an ancient spellbook written by a legendary witch. (The Dragon tries to convince her that the spells are nonsense, since he'd never been able to get them to work.)

I first read this in 2015 (my original review) and had forgotten much of the plot. This time round I noticed that almost all of the major characters -- Agnieszka, Kasia, Queen Hanna, the sorceress Alosha, the forest queen -- are female; that each magic-user has a different style of magic (Agnieszka's is often described as fluid or wandering, the Dragon's is crisp and precise); that Agnieszka re-roots herself in village life, unlike all the girls before her. 

The depiction of Agnieszka and Kasia's friendship was a delight -- including the nasty pettinesses that creep into even the best of friendships. The book club discussion also focussed on the romance: the age gap felt insignificant beside the inherent power dynamic of the teacher-student relationship. I'm glad to have revisited this, but it's not my favourite of Novik's novels -- though I now have a strong urge to reread the Scholomance books...

Read because: book club selection.

2026/129: Dionysus in Wisconsin — E H Lupton

"...since you met him you keep getting attacked by demons.”
“Twice!” Sam said. “It’s happened twice.”
“It’s been two weeks!”
Harry was looking back and forth between them nervously. “Ellen, every relationship has trade-offs.”[p. 193]

Audiobook of a novel I enjoyed very much last winter (original review from January). Dionysus in Wisconsin is set in Madison in 1969, in a reality where magic works and ghosts walk. Ulysses Lenkov is a 'human lightning rod', a magician who can attract and talk to spirits (but can't decide a subject for his dissertation). Sam Sterling is a mild-mannered archivist who's moved back to Madison to be near his family, who he doesn't especially like. Warned by a fellow magic-user that something big is coming -- something connected with the god Dionysus -- Ulysses seeks out Sam and discovers that his first name happens to be Dionysus ... and that there's a strong mutual attraction between them.

Narrated by Scott Paige, who gives each character a distinct voice (and manages a very spooky ghost-Abi at one point). I really liked the loucheness of his Ulysses, and the way that Sam and Ulysses' voices changed over the course of the book. Ulysses is much more fun after he's lightened up a bit and allowed himself to be emotionally involved with Sam, and Sam's dilemma. And Sam sounds much more confident by the end of the novel.

Read because: I noticed that E H Lupton was offering free review copies, and leapt at the chance. And now, of course, I want to reread the rest of the series...

Thanks to the author for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. The audiobook is available now.

2026/128: The CIA Book Club — Charlie English

"A book was like fresh air. They allowed us to survive and not go mad.”

During the 1980s, the Solidarity movement in Poland (expanded from the original Solidarity union) was the main opposition to the Soviet-backed Communist regime. Even before martial law was declared in 1981, the CIA were quietly funding the import, publication and distribution of subversive literature, from Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago to Orwell's 1984 ... as well as fashion magazines, the Guardian Weekly, and novels by Vonnegut and Le Carre. America also funded underground printing initiatives, such as Mazovia Weekly and Kultura.

English's book is well-researched yet reads like a thriller, with vivid characters (ex-pat Jerzy Giedroyc in Paris, whose CIA codename was QRBERETTA; Mirosław Chojecki, self-appointed Minister for Smuggling; Helena Łuczywo, editor of Mazovia Weekly, who relied on the innate chauvinism of the secret police to keep her and her mostly-female team safe) and a compelling account of the key events of the period, from the founding of the Solidarity union to the election of Lech Wałęsa as President in 1990.

I remember some (though not all) of the major events covered in this book, but very much from the perspective of a teenager with little interest in politics and less understanding of what it might be like to live under an oppressive regime. I certainly wouldn't, then or now, have associated the CIA with such a hands-off, benevolent approach to undermining communism! (It's harder to imagine it happening in 2026.) And I found English's account of underground activism uplifting, even inspiring: people's time, money, effort, even lives, dedicated to a greater cause.

Narrated by James Parsons, who (as far as I can tell) pronounced Polish names correctly and clearly, and highlighted the occasional black humour of the book.

Read because: I bought the ebook when it was on offer -- I think it was at a time when my interest in the Cold War peaked -- but didn't get around to it until I noticed that the library had the audiobook. I combined the two, which worked very nicely.

2026/127: Yield Under Great Persuasion — Alexandra Rowland

...maybe finally he’d be a different person, someone he liked more than the person he was now. Someone who could let sweetness and softness happen to him without his throat closing up in fear and suspicion. Someone who could be loved. [p. 163]

Tam Brocken runs a tea shop in a village. He's lonely, if you discount -- as he does -- the more-or-less weekly occasions on which he has sex with Lord Lyford. He always leaves hastily, and it's just sex, so that's all right -- even if Lyford (who he's hated since childhood) keeps flirting with him. And then Tam and Lyford are assigned to run the matchmaking tent at the village festival. Together.

Then Tam, trying to escape the village gossips, meets the goddess Angarat on the road, and she imparts a few home truths ... including that Tam is stuck in a rut of his own devising, and that he should keep an open mind about Lyford, and give him a chance to redeem himself.

This is a story about second chances, divine favor, and trying to be a better person. It's a sweet story, though Tam is often far from sweet: and it's also a rural idyll, with gods walking the world and interacting with humans, and with a really strong sense of Lyford and Tam's love for the land. A gentle and life-affirming novel that's often very funny and (usually at other points) very steamy.

Read because: wishlist hit, plus I'd just finished a book by Rowland's fellow Serpent Freya Marske. Though the two are very different writers, there's a commonality of timbre. I also felt that the explicit sex scenes qualified this as a fill for the 'erotic fantasy' prompt on a book challenge. Also, 'set at harvest time'.

2026/126: Bodies of Magic — Freya Marske

Perhaps a body was all you ever were.
Perhaps a body was the least of what you were.
They were days away from becoming a fully-fledged healer and they still didn't know which was true. Or if both were, somehow. [loc. 2776]

Five medical students at the Academie of the Grand Duchy of Sieuxerr are about to begin their final exam -- a week-long trial of five medical cases, which the five healers will have to work together to diagnose and perhaps treat. They will pass together, or fail together. And this particular exam group (randomly chosen, of course) comprises five very different individuals, each with secrets, each with complicated emotions towards the others. Moyna is the daughter of ambitious parents who moved to Sieuxerr so that Moyna could be trained in the healing arts, and serve her community. Alys is an aristocratic beauty with little magical aptitude. Estiene is the son of the Head Healer. Jehan comes from a working-class, single-parent family. Clement is non-binary, and the best friend of the most gifted student of their year, Ysabel Caudotte ... and Ysabel is found, dead, in their exam chamber on the first day of the exam.

She's not their case: they don't have to diagnose or treat. But each of the five has some connection to Ysabel, and each has secrets to keep, complications to manouevre, expectations and fears and hopes. As the week progresses, it's clear that Ysabel had been planning something: but what? And did it lead to her death?

The gradual fleshing-out of each of the five, as the novel rotates through their viewpoints, is brilliantly and effectively achieved. Each begins the week distrusting one or more of their fellow candidates: each ends the week with a better understanding of the others, and of their own skills and weaknesses. The medical cases are interesting, too, and the author's medical background is evident in the details of diagnostic techniques.

Marske's worldbuilding is understated but sound: I liked the little details of Sieuxerr, from the lingering horrors of a terrible pandemic (the serrage) to the almond-paste 'sweetmice' that are eaten to celebrate Mathe's feast; from the artificers' strikes to the bestselling popular novels about Healer Chambeley. The themes of class, of institutional corruption, and of medical diagnosis are thoroughly explored, but there's also room for romance(s) as well as the core murder mystery. I liked this a great deal.

Read because: I checked Netgalley as soon as I heard that Marske had a new novel on the way: I discovered her via the Be the Serpent podcast, and have very much enjoyed her other work.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 17th September 2026.

2026/125: They Bloom at Night — Trang Thanh Tran

Every generation before had a semblance of chance, but we have the end of the world. This end of the world. It’s beautiful, it’s crushing, and I wish we could think of a future without a thousand ways of how we must change to endure it.

Nhung, known as Noon, lives on a boat with her mother, making a living by selling the sometimes-mutated fish they catch. Hurricane Arlene took Noon's father and brother, and flooded Mercy, Louisiana: it also left behind a toxic bloom of weird red algae, and there have been sightings of strange sea creatures and reports of missing persons. When a marine biologist goes missing, Noon -- along with Covey, the daughter of the town's big boss -- is tasked with capturing a monster. Any monster.

Noon herself has been changing for months. After a sexual assault, her hair turned white overnight, and she's losing her fingernails. She no longer feels at home in her body. Is she a monster? What has triggered her transformation -- the assault, or something in the water?

Noon is very much alone: she's frustrated by her mother's certainty that the sea will reincarnate her lost husband and son, perhaps as sea creatures, and there's an undercurrent of lingering resentment that, as a girl, Noon was always second best. Later, she reconnects with an old friend, Wilder, and Wilder's new friend Saffy, who is trans. There's a tentative friendship blooming with Covey, too: an accomplished huntress, yes, but also a young woman rejecting her big-boss father and everything he stands for. And ultimately Noon comes to understand, and to reconcile herself to, her mother's beliefs ... and their roots in the family history.

This is as much a novel about becoming your true self as it is about the ecological, social and economic changes wrought by the hurricane and the algae. There's some stomach-turning body horror, and a pervasive sense of unease: Tran evokes the smells, sounds and motion of Noon's world with vivid sensory detail. I found Noon's prickliness very relatable, and was captivated by the ways in which various mermaid stories (not the Disney versions) were woven into Noon's story.

I read the audiobook, narrated by Nhi Do, who managed some truly unsettling vocal effects.

Read because: it was on offer at Libro.fm, and the Libro.fm 2026 Audiobook Listening Challenge has a prompt for 'a winning audiobook from our 2025 Bookseller Choice Awards': as I read, I decided it also fitted 'a BIPOC retelling of a fairytale', for the original Little Mermaid.

2026/124: Annie Bot — Sierra Greer

Doug and all the other humans talk about their lives with a myopic intensity, sharing singular, subjective opinions as if they are each the protagonist of their own novel. ... they treat their fellow humans as guest protagonists visiting from their own respective books. None of the humans are satellites the way she is, in her orbit around Doug. [p. 215]

Annie is in an abusive relationship with Doug: he says she's fat, criticises her housework, and chooses her lingerie. She's not allowed to go online without permission / supervision. He punishes her with the silent treatment.

It's all right, though </sarcasm> because Annie isn't a real woman. She's a bot -- an artificial being grown in a lab from a human embryo and mechanical components. Doug literally owns her: he purchased her, as a 'Cuddle Bunny' (sexbot), and he gets to decide everything about her, from her breast size to how high her libido is set. (One horrific scene has him setting libido to 10 and then locking her in a closet: she can't 'simulate orgasm' without him inside her, and she is desperate.) But Doug has also switched on 'auto-didact' mode, and Annie is evolving as she learns more about the world -- and about herself. She's also learnt, somehow, to keep a secret -- one that she knows would hurt Doug.

Annie's growing self-awareness, and her understanding of her situation, is powerfully conveyed. I am not sure I liked this novel, but I did want to keep reading to see how Annie evolved. Because it's a first-person narrative, embedded in Annie's physical and mental experience, it has an immediacy that's lacking in some other works with comparable themes. And Doug, for all his many faults, isn't a two-dimensional villain. He changes (perhaps even grows) over the course of the novel. He based Annie's appearance on his ex-wife Gwen, and it's possible to infer the story of Doug and Gwen's relationship from Doug's reactions to Annie. But even at his best, he's pretty bad.

Read because: this book won the Arthur C Clarke Award, and I was curious.