We’ve finished another month, and despite all the holidays and family demands, I did actually read things! Some of those things were very good! The best of them I’ve already shared, but the best of them are also worth sharing again. And there are a fair few others that are worth talking about. So let’s get into it.

Short Fiction

As always, I want to draw attention to my monthly Clarkesworld and Magazine Minis reviews. There are at least three standouts in those two posts, though if I had to shout out just one, it would be “Liecraft” by Anita Moskát. But for now, let’s look at the miscellany:

December Favorites

• Bloodchild (1984 novelette) by Octavia Butler. A story that’s compelling for its weird aliens and even more so for the way it dives into parasitism, pregnancy, complicated power dynamics, and love among siblings or between species.
• Exile’s End (2020 novelette) by Carolyn Ives Gilman. The story of a descendent of a race thought destroyed coming back to retrieve a cultural artifact, compelling from the start and noteworthy in particular for how it develops sympathetic characters on both sides of the inevitable legal conflict.
• Where You Left Me (2021 short story) by Thomas Ha. An addiction story that digs into the social factors perpetuating the problems and the heartwrenching decisions one father must make as a consequence.

Strong Contenders

• Your Life in Parties (2025 short story) by Amber Sparks. A non-linear story that does. . . well, what it says on the tin, diving into the small details of life via a series of vignettes in party settings.
• Yesterday (2025 novelette) by A.M. Barrie. A story about friendship and resistance in a world in which the literal trees have begun to tell the stories that humanity has forgotten.
• Panhumanism: Hope and Pragmatics (2017 novelette) by Jess Barber and Sara Saab. A story told over a period of decades via a series of vignettes in the life of a lead working on sustainability technology while threading through a series of encounters with a brilliant, eccentric childhood friend and lover.
• The Privilege of a Happy Ending (2018 novelette) by Kij Johnson. In some ways reading like a fairy tale, with a young orphan protagonist and a talking chicken trying to escape the ravenous monsters that eat everything in their path. But it’s also a story that regularly breaks the fourth wall, forcing the readers to consider their own perspective and the parts of the accounts that are shared compared to those that are left out.

Others I Enjoyed in December

• Touring with the Alien (2016 novelette) by Carolyn Ives Gilman. A road trip story indirectly featuring aliens who don’t experience their own consciousness but often enjoy seeing through human eyes. A fascinating read, albeit with an ending a bit simpler than I’d hoped.
• Dreidel of Dread: the Very Cthulu Chanukah (2015 flash fiction) by Alex Shvartsman. This aspires to be a few hundred words of silly holiday fun and totally succeeds.
• Cold Wind (2014 novelette) by Nicola Griffith. A beautifully written winter solstice story featuring a lead tracking a mythic huntress.
• Time is an Ocean (2023 short story) by Angela Liu. A protagonist who never manages to fit in is visited by a time traveler offering companionship while harboring quiet feelings of loss, glimpsed only indirectly.
• Night of the Cooters (1987 short story) by Howard Waldrop. An alien invasion story with a Texas setting, a whole lot of dynamite, it’s the narrative voice that makes this one.
• The Dog Said Bow-Wow (2001 short story) by Michael Swanwick. An entertaining tale of a confidence scheme run by a bipedel, intelligent dog.
• Give the Family my Love (2019 short story) by A.T. Greenblatt. A lone astronaut is sent on an unlikely mission to an incomprehensibly huge alien library, where her research into ways to avert environmental destruction begins to drift into questions about whether the world can even be saved at all, all told in a series of letters narrated to a brother more than 30 lightyears away.

Novels and Novellas

Reviews Posted

I only posted three novel reviews this month, but they were for three of my favorite books I read this year:

• The Sign of the Dragon (2020 novel) by Mary Soon Lee. An epic in verse detailing the reign of a reluctant king whose kindness makes him worthy of myth.
• Station Eleven (2014 novel) by Emily St. John Mandel. A blend of post-apocalyptic and pandemic story, beautifully written with a remarkable number of fully-realized, compelling characters.
• Fourth Mansions (1969 novel) by R.A. Lafferty. A zany political conspiracy tale featuring an Everyman lead beset by four supernatural monsters vying for the soul of mankind. A delightful read with layers upon layers of symbolism.

Other December Reads

• The Raven Scholar (2025 novel) by Antonia Hodgson. A fantasy epic influenced more by the competition stories of the last couple decades than by Tolkien, with plenty of twists and turns to satisfy readers who can bring a little extra suspension of disbelief. Full review to come.
• When We Were Real (2025 novel) by Daryl Gregory. A road trip story in a world confirmed to a simulation, with several compelling characters but an overall plot that unfolds into more of a thriller form than I usually prefer. Full review to come.
• The Dark is Rising (1973 novel) by Susan Cooper. A middle-grade classic, with an extremely simple plot and passive protagonist that gets by purely on the exceptional atmosphere. Full review to come.

Miscellaneous

It’s the end of the year, so I posted a pair of annual favorites lists, starting with my favorite piece each year, my Recommended Reading List, and followed by a new feature in 2025, Tar Vol’s 20 from the Backlist.