September 2025 Round-up and Short Fiction Miscellany

It’s been a bit of a topsy-turvy month in real life, but I’ve managed to get a lot of reading done, albeit in a different order than usual. And when you read enough in any given month, you’re bound to find amazing things that you want to share with the world. So let’s do that, starting, as always, with short fiction.

Short Fiction

As always, let me commend to you my two previous short fiction reviews. My Clarkesworld review has a strong short story from Claire Jia-Wen and an excellent novelette from Louis Inglis Hall, and my Magazine Minis features an interestingly messy tale from Monte Lin and an intensely immersive short piece from Natasha King. Check them out. But today is for the miscellany, so let’s look at my reading outside those two review posts:;pp

September Favorites

New Niches (2025 short story) by Jackie Roberti. An introspective, vibe-heavy story featuring a lead working alone on an offshore wind farm, reflecting on the ecosystems lost to climate change and a relationship lost due in large part to her environmental pessimism. The journey here is almost entirely internal, but it’s emotionally tense and thematically compelling in a world where pessimism is easy and it’s difficult to find the way forward.
Suddenwall (2017 short story) by Sara Saab. An aftermath of war story that digs heavily into the mind of people who have committed atrocities and how both they and society try to move forward even as the knowledge lingers in their mind–and as a tiny voice tells them the atrocities were necessary. Emotionally and thematically fascinating.
Freediver (2025 short story) by Isabel J. Kim. A slow-moving disaster story that’s really more of a personal story about the need to feel in control and the reasons people do dangerous things. I immediately wanted to pair it in a discussion with Left the Century to Sit Unmoved.
Mary Margaret Road-Grader (1976 short story) by Howard Waldrop. My first Waldrop story and surely not my last, with a fascinatingly entertaining voice, a healthy dollop of humor, and a clever inversion on the nostalgia-laden “times are changing” trope.

Strong Contenders

The Best Way to Survive a Tiger Attack (2025 flash fiction) by A.W. Prihandita. A very short bit of magical realism where you could excise the speculative element, call it a metaphor, and probably not change the story much. But it’s an affecting portrayal of abuse coming from a caregiver, whether or not the tiger is literal.
Arthur Sternbach Brings the Curveball to Mars (1999 short story) by Kim Stanley Robinson. This one is just a lot of fun, reimagining a wild version of baseball in a Martian landscape and having one of the token Americans change the game forever. It goes about how you’d expect, but it’s satisfying nonetheless, and there are enough little character interactions that give it more depth than your average fun sports story.
The Heartbreak Hotel on Plutonic Planet (2025 short story) by Carolyn Zhao. A fascinating premise–in which heartbreak literally sends someone to Pluto that digs into different forms of emotional loss and moving on and building something new afterwards.
Welcome to Spruceway (2025 short story) by Brianne Battye. An epistolary zombie story that’s short on actual zombies. It’s literally presented as a tour of a mall in which survivors have holed up during the apocalypse, and though it doesn’t lack for loss, there’s a focus on the way ordinary people live their lives that’s a refreshing departure from the typical gore of the subgenre.
Human Voices (2025 novelette) by Isabel J. Kim. My book club friends might have my head for not putting this one in my top tier, and I can understand why–it’s a really well put-together story that layers multiple folk tales onto a contemporary setting story in which a monster is captured by two sisters and is forced to evaluate its life so far from its typical environs. But with some notable exceptions, I’m not a huge fairy tale mashup guy, and I often struggle to connect emotionally with monster-perspective stories. Honestly, that may be all that’s missing for me here. If you like monster-POV, go give it a read now.

Others I Enjoyed in September

To Kill a Language (2025 flash fiction) by Rukman Ragas. Leads with a fair bit of gore but delivers interesting themes and a couple wonderful images.
Diamond Girls (2005 novelette) by Louise Marley. This is explicitly wish fulfillment about women breaking into baseball, with a speculative genetic engineering premise adding a further wrinkle. As such, there’s really only one way it could go, but it’s fun getting there, with some quality internal and interpersonal dynamics. That said, it does force suspension of disbelief on a couple baseball strategy elements that I struggled with.
The Star and the Rockets (2009 short story) by Harry Turtledove. The vibes here are almost like a sci-fi magical realism story, an alt history of the player who set the baseball home run record while playing in the minor leagues in the Southwest. Here, he has an otherworldly experience early in the story and spends the rest of the time with it in the back of his mind, even while hitting dingers and contemplating his career after baseball.
It Might Be He Returns (2025 short story) by Fatima Taqvi. A Karachi orphan performs tasks for the being on the other side of a magic mirror, hoping for a life-changing return. It’s an interesting tale, with the biggest question being whether the lead will still want the same things after new doors open.
Please Properly Cage Your Words (2025 short story) by Beth Goder. A short, surreal, metafictional piece that may ultimately go in an expected direction but still makes for an entertaining read.
Happily Ever After Comes Round (2024 short story) by Sarah Rees Brennan. An extremely dark Hansel and Gretel retelling that is no less immersive for all its horror. A bit grim and fatalistic for my tastes, but it’s expertly told and wonderfully works in the musings on how a tale calcifies as the story everyone knows.
Keep Talking (2014 short story) by Marie Vibbert. A dual-perspective story about parenting an autistic teenager trying to decode an alien message, and about being an autistic teenager trying to relate to neurotypical people who can’t seem to intuit your needs properly.
Mavka (2025 short story) by A.D. Sui. A dark and disorienting tale about surviving a brutal winter with soldiers confiscating whatever food that can be scrounged. It blurs perspective so that the reader is never quite sure what’s real. This is put together wonderfully well–I’m not sure what else I wanted from it except for it to not be horror, which of course is only a matter of personal taste. Horror fans, give it a look.
The Country Doctor (1993 short story) by Steven Utley. The story about excavating graves in a small town soon to be destroyed by rerouted waters, slowly uncovering the strange details of the town. I wanted a bit more closure here, but it’s certainly an intriguing build.

Novels and Novellas

Reviews Posted

Gardens of the Moon (1999 novel) by Steven Erikson. The famous start of the sprawling Malazan series, this one shows the flashes of brilliance that have the series so acclaimed, especially as it reaches the climax, but it frontloads too many perspective characters and doesn’t give the reader enough reason to invest in the early stages.
17776 and 20020 (2017 and 2020. . . something?) by Jon Bois. These are ostensibly about football in the future, but in reality, it’s a dealing-with-immortality story and a pandemic story, with tons of digressions into the kinds of stories that can be found anywhere. 17776 is pure brilliance and can be read as a standalone, whereas 20020 introduces a cliffhanger that has not yet been resolved.
The Summer War (2025 novella) by Naomi Novik. A short, original fairy tale with archetypical characters and interesting themes that really nails the fairy tale voice.
Ella Enchanted (1997 novel) by Gail Carson Levine. Really exceptional middle grade fantasy, with an original and creative premise that ties into a retelling without being too beholden to it and a remarkable depth of characterization. This one is a blast.
The Phoenix Pencil Company (2025 novel) by Allison King. A story of family, memory, and the moral issues that come in questions of data preservation. The war subplot could’ve hit harder but the intergenerational relationship is wonderful.
House of the Rain King (2025 novel) by Will Greatwich. A standalone fantasy epic with a refreshing and complex take on fantasy religion.

Tar Vol on

Science Fiction and Fantasy