September 2nd, 2024 — Art
A couple of pieces I did for a comic called “Zebra Girl”:
Two more Schlock Mercenary pieces: an enlistment poster for Tagon’s Toughs, and an innocent game of poker.
This one is definitely fanart, for a comic about a girl and a sheep that guides her through dreams, or something? I don’t even remember the name of the comic but I can tell I was trying to emulate its style here.
Keith Onzeker, from Eric Burns-White’s webcomic Gossamer Commons:
August 29th, 2024 — Art
I’ve realized that there’s a lot of my art that I don’t have on this site. Let’s fix that.
As a test run, here’s a few of my older fanart pieces. Cringing at your old work means you’ve grown as an artist, right?
First, some Schlock Mercenary fanart from 2004, featuring Athena, the avatar of the starship Athens, with a teddy bear that looks suspiciously similar to a koalaesque, nigh-omnipotent AI…
Next, a few portraits of the Endless, from Sandman, also dating back to 2004. It’s sickening that the author turned out to be a serial rapist, but I didn’t know that at the time.
I never finished that series of portraits, and at this point, I never will. So it goes.
And finally, since the way I drew Dream reminded me of a certain other character, here’s (mostly) the same lineart recolored to become Jareth, the Goblin King:
That’s probably enough to test out how this looks on WordPress, at least. I’ll unearth some more ancient art next time…
June 3rd, 2024 — News
I finally got around to reinstalling WordPress and updating PHP. I’ve reimported all of the previous content; however, some of the formatting is a bit weird. I’ll hopefully fix that soon.
Also, hopefully I’ll get my reading list put back together at some point! I never finished my 2023 reading list and I’m not sure where my 2023 reading ended and my 2024 reading began, but I’ll figure something out.
More soon!
February 19th, 2023 — News
Previous years\’ reading lists: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
2023 Novels:
2023 Novellas:
Non-2023 works read in 2023:
November 17th, 2022 — Books
Mary Robinette Kowal\’s new novel The Spare Man has a cocktail recipe at the beginning of every chapter. I\’d like to try all the drinks as I read, but my liquor cabinet is not quite as extensive as an actual bar\’s – so I thought I\’d put together a shopping list. Here\’s what you need to make all the recipes in the chapter headings of The Spare Man:
Clearly this is not a project for the faint of heart. I\’m hoping there are some substitutions that can be made so I don\’t end up with six bottles of slightly different Italian bitter aperitifs… More research is definitely needed.
July 17th, 2022 — Books, Hugos
I may tweak a couple rankings before the final ballot is due, but at the moment here\’s my ballot for Best Novel.
I first encountered Clark\’s \”Dead Djinn Universe\” in The Haunting of Tram Car 015, a finalist for the Best Novella Hugo in 2020, and I was thrilled to return to the world for a longer story. A Master of Djinn was everything I was hoping it would be and more, giving us a deeper understanding of the djinn\’s place in this alternate Egyptian society, a few tantalizing glimpses into how the return of magic to the world has manifested in other parts of the world, and of course a high-stakes mystery weaving through the mundane and mystical realms. I\’m really looking forward to reading more in this universe.
Becky Chambers\’s stories are a balm for the soul. I first discovered her with the first Wayfarers book, and I was deeply sad to learn that The Galaxy and the Ground Within was to be the last one in the series. Other than that disappointment, though, the novel was another comforting delight, following a small cast of characters trapped at a planetside travelers\’ inn when the local orbital traffic gets shut down due to an accident. Each of the characters brings their own story, history, and baggage to their accidental cohabitation, and Chambers weaves their arcs together with her usual warmth, portraying once again an aspirational world where people of varied backgrounds can overcome their differences and prejudices and learn to care about one another. We need more of that in our world.
If the first book in the Teixcalaan series, A Memory Called Empire, hadn\’t already won a Hugo, I\’d likely have this one at the top of my ballot. It\’s a worthy second entry in the series, broadening the scope of the series out to the edges of Teixcalaan space and further into the depths of intrigue within the imperial capital, the military, and even Lsel Station. Fans of Ann Leckie will particularly enjoy this series, I think.
This novel takes a few more liberties with science and engineering than Weir\’s debut The Martian did, but fans of that novel are likely to enjoy this one as well. It starts with a very similar feel – the lone genius solving his way out of dangerous situations with the twin powers of Science and Engineering – but the story soon takes on more depth as Weir weaves in more background and a wider cast of characters. Overall, a satisfyingly crunchy \”hard sci-fi\” story that balances the \”science\” part with the \”fiction\” part well.
This was a really fun read, weaving together a couple wildly different genres/tropes – Faustian bargains for musical talent and alien visitors living on Earth in disguise – into a story of a trans teenager just trying to survive and keep her music alive. The genre whiplash felt weird at first but over the course of the book Aoki melded the disparate threads well, leading up to a payoff that tied everything together.
Dire and difficult but worthwhile, full of questions about what aspects of our destiny we can shape ourselves, and what is beyond our control to influence. I don\’t even know if I\’d necessarily say I enjoyed this book – but I definitely believe it deserves a place on the ballot nevertheless.
January 14th, 2022 — News
Previous years\’ reading lists: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Asterisked works were read in 2023 but in time to be considered for the 2022 Hugos.
2022 Novels:
2022 Novellas:
2022 Short Stories:
2022 YA Stories (Lodestar):
Non-2022 works read in 2022:
March 10th, 2021 — Books
I\’ll format this more sometime. 2021 works are organized by Hugo category, bolded if I\’m considering them for nomination. (2021 works read in 2022 are marked with an asterisk.)
2021 Novels:
2021 Novellas:
2021 Young Adult (Lodestar):
Series Eligible for Nomination in 2022:
Non-2021 works:
May 30th, 2020 — Books
![\"Cover](\"https://www.pyrlogos.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/GideonTheNinth-1.jpg\")
Gideon Nav is a snarky teenage girl, abandoned as a baby at the Ninth House of necromancy, secluded on a small, dreary planet on the outskirts of the Dominicus star system. Her possessions are few, but they include a) a passionate and mutual hatred of Harrowhawk Nonagesimus, the Ninth House\’s heir and most skilled necromancer, b) a fervent desire to escape the Ninth House and do something with her life besides be constantly tormented by Harrow, and c) a large sword and the skills (and, as a point of particular pride for Gideon, biceps) to use it well. A gathering of representatives from the necromantic Houses may give Gideon the chance she\’s been looking for – if she can survive working with Harrow.
The gathering\’s goals are unclear and the rules seem few, and the venue is an ancient ruin filled with locked doors. The doors conceal secrets and dangers, hinting at the potential to attain vast necromantic power. Each of the Houses have not only their own style of necromancy but their own secrets to keep as well, and so the assembly of adepts and their cavaliers quickly ignites into intrigue, as the Houses compete and cooperate to try to solve the mysteries to which they have been summoned.
The setting is a brilliant fusion of sci-fi and fantasy, interplanetary travel and research laboratories set against reanimated skeletons and corpse divination, reminiscent of Warhammer 40K or the Craft Sequence.  Gideon herself is an entertaining viewpoint character, sarcastic and sharp-tongued, but clearly out of her depth among the more properly-trained cavaliers of the other Houses; that plus her past gives her both a drive to prove herself and a deep sense of insecurity.  Her and Harrow\’s enmity is tied into their past as well, and their need to figure out how to work together despite their history drives a sympathetic character arc that interacts well with the mystery plot. The end of the book tees up plot elements for the sequel – Harrow the Ninth, out later this year – but Gideon the Ninth still comes to a satisfying resolution on its own, tying the plot and character arcs together in a tense and exciting climax.
February 29th, 2020 — Books, Hugos
These are the 2019 novels going on my Hugo nominating ballot, as well as my one nomination for Best Series. Header links go to the books\’ Goodreads pages, to save me the trouble of writing synopses.
I\’ve previously reviewed this one in more detail, but I want to reiterate that this book utterly blew me away.  Middlegame is the best novel yet from one of my favorite authors. Seanan McGuire deserves a whole pile of awards for this one, with a shiny rocket perched at the top of the stack.
This is one of those cases where judging a book by its cover worked out really well for me. The striking cover art for The Priory of the Orange Tree (illustrated by Ivan Belikov) immediately grabbed my attention, and the novel definitely delivered.  TPotOT fits the epic scope of a multi-book fantasy series into a single (rather large) volume, weaving together multiple satisfying character arcs with a world-saving quest. History and tradition are a strong theme throughout the book, as the characters are forced to confront the fact that the founding legends of their culture are not as reflective of reality as they\’d always thought.
My one complaint about this book is that it feels a little rushed in places; the events of the book could have easily filled out a trilogy. Instead, a few of the plot points were resolved somewhat abruptly in order to wrap up the story in 800 pages. All the same, there\’s something to be said for a standalone novel in a genre that seems to regard three books as the minimum possible length for a complete story arc.
A murder mystery rife with political and personal intrigue, woven together with some classic but skillfully used SF tropes. The new ambassador to the empire of Teixcalaan arrives from her small, independent mining colony with a malfunctioning memory implant and a pile of questions about her dead predecessor, and soon gets embroiled in Teixcalaan\’s own internal politics herself. Martine has a lot to say about the cultural and political mechanisms of hegemony and imperialism, within an empire that at once feels attractively exotic and frighteningly familiar to a modern reader.
Two parts coming-of-age story, one part love letter to foodie culture, one part rumination on philosophy and social justice, and a generous topping of space-station shenanigans.  The Sol Majestic was just a joy to read, with a wide cast of wacky yet deeply sympathetic characters trying to simultaneously save the titular restaurant and get the main character through his increasingly imperiled philosophical rite of passage.
Something about the narrative voice took me a couple chapters to get used to, or maybe it was just the automatic distancing I tend to do when reading about abusive families – but then Casiopea accidentally let the Lord of Xibalba out of her grandfather\’s trap, and I could barely put it down after that. The author blends Mayan mythology with the turbulence of 1920s Mexico to create a perfect, vivid setting for a tale in which the ancient and the modern clash in multiple different ways.
Unusually, I didn\’t read a lot of books in series that are eligible for the Best Series Hugo last year; in most cases, the books that I read were either standalones, in series that hadn\’t met the minimum length, or were ineligible due to having been nominated too recently. The one exception is InCryptid, one of my favorite series, which has once again become eligible with the publication of Tricks for Free in 2018 and That Ain\’t Witchcraft in 2019.
The series is about the Price family, a group of cryptozoologists serving the cryptid population of North America and defending them from the murderous Covenant of St. George, an anti-cryptid organization the Prices\’ ancestors once belonged to. The series started off with an urban-fantasy tone, but has grown into something entirely its own, blending folklore monsters with magic, ghost stories, and an abiding love of carnivals. Much like the October Daye books – McGuire\’s longest-running series, and eligible for the award again next year – the individual novels in the series are a lot of fun to read, but the broader arc of the entire series is really where the work shines. The saga of the Price family now stretches over at least nine novels (depending on whether you count the Rose books) and a big pile of short fiction; the novels frequently make reference to the family\’s history, which the short stories explore in more detail. (It\’s fun getting to see some of the things that were referenced in the novels happen \”on screen\”, but none of the stories are required reading for the main series to make sense.) With each new novel, we get more depth in both the past and present of the series\’ world, and McGuire draws on her love of folklore and her experience in wildlife rescue to create an entire fictional ecology of cryptids for her characters to study, protect, and befriend.
Anyway, I love recommending Seanan McGuire to new people, not only because I adore her work, but also because I can shove a gigantic pile of books she\’s already written at them, and assure them that there will be plenty more where those came from. McGuire publishes a new entry in each of the InCryptid, October Daye, and Wayward Children series every year, and usually at least one other novel besides. She has also spoken previously about the precautions she takes to make sure her series won\’t get cancelled without an ending; she maintains an exit plan to wrap up each series within the remaining books currently contracted in case the contract for the series is not extended. Luckily, I don\’t think that\’s going to be an issue any time soon.