For a while now, this site has been mostly a place for me to ramble about pieces of fiction that I particularly enjoy (or feel strongly about), whether these are books, shows, or movies. I don’t post often and haven’t used it as a conventional blog in some time, but I’m going to try and bring it back to life a bit over the coming year.
I’m unlikely to post anything regularly, but I did want to end 2024 with a bit of a ‘year in review’ and I hopefully continue this tradition in the future. I suppose my impetus for this is that I do have more published short stories in the world, so there is the vanishingly small chance that people will want to look me up and learn something more about me.
If you have found me in this fashion, I am exceedingly sorry to disappoint you. I can assure you that my writing is much more interesting than I am, and encourage you to check out some of the links below (it is all free to read).
Table of Contents
My Year in Writing
I am proud to say that 2024 was a major milestone for me as a writer.
In 2024, I made my first pro-rate sale of a short story to Beneath Ceaseless Skies. My Norse-inspired fantasy short ‘God’s Breath’ was featured in Issue #412 in July.
‘God’s Breath’ is the story of an old man trying to protect his infant granddaughter from the interference of a star-god, fearing the price of the god’s life-giving breath. It explores issues of life and free will, within a medieval Nordic setting. You can see an ‘inspo post’ that I made for Twitter/Bluesky below:
This sale was a huge milestone for me in a few ways. For starters, BCS has been a dream publication for years now and it was the first place where I submitted ‘God’s Breath. In addition, I had two shorts published at a semi pro-rate in 2023 (linked here) and both of these were submitted to 15-20 magazines before getting an acceptance. So this was a significant shift in reception!
I cannot stress the confidence this publication gave me to continue pursuing my writing goals.
I did complete another short story in the spring, as well as reworking an old story into a flash piece over the summer. Both of these are currently out on submission. I wrote a third short piece towards the end of the summer, but it has taken me some time to finish editing it as a major life event interrupted my progress — my daughter was born at the beginning of October!
Between all of this, I’ve managed to get around 20K words into my new novel, which is a post-apocalyptic science fantasy. In 2025, I’m hoping to finish a first draft of this new WIP and maybe publish one of the pieces that is currently looking for a home. We’ll see what the year brings!
My Year in Reading
I had a relatively good year of reading for 2024, although I didn’t get through much in the last couple of months! Here were my reads for the year:
- Act One of the Deverry Cycle, Katherine Kerr
- Daggerspell
- Darkspell
- Dawnspell
- Dragonspell
- Remembrance of Earth’s Past Trilogy, Cixin Liu
- The Three Body Problem
- The Dark Forest
- Death’s End
- Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr
- The Best of Jack Vance, Jack Vance
- Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang
- The Drowning Empire Trilogy, Andrea Stewart
- The Bone Shard Daughter
- The Bone Shard War
- The Bone Shard Emperor
- Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
- The Liveship Traders Trilogy, Robin Hobb
- Ship of Magic
- Mad Ship
- Ship of Destiny
A lot of these series were ones I’d started in 2023 (or earlier) and finished up this year, so I only read 14 books in total. It was a good mix of fantasy and science fiction, including a few more literary works in the mix.
Overall, I really enjoyed everything that I read this year. I don’t think there was anything where I wished I hadn’t read it afterward. Below are my quick thoughts on each of these:
Katherin Kerr, Deverry
This is classic ‘80s high fantasy in a Celtic-inspired setting. These books were a gift and it took me a bit to get around to reading them. However, when I did sit down I really enjoyed them! They felt a bit like fantasy comfort food if I’m being honest, which was a nice change of pace at the time.
Some parts of the story or characterization didn’t entirely work or felt dated, but I’d compare them favorably to other classics from that era. I’ve been aware of Kerr as a female contemporary of fantasy stalwarts like Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, etc., and I do think this series deserves more recognition than it gets.
I’m not sure whether I’ll come back to Kerr’s other Deverry books at some later date (there are 16 and she’s still writing them, I believe), but you never know! Maybe I’ll want a nostalgia hit again at some point.
Cixin Liu, The Three Body Problem
So these books are sort of flavour-of-the-month right now, especially with the Netflix show. They’re translated from the Chinese and the writing style is definitely quite idiosyncratic, which may be a function of the translation or simply the original author’s voice.
Overall, these books have quite pronounced strengths and weaknesses in my opinion. Being hard sci-fi, the books are really built around the ideas the author is exploring about alien contact and playing out that scenario over the course of generations. How he imagines this is quite fascinating and thought-provoking, so they’re a great read from that perspective.
However, the characterization is really shallow — to the extent that I don’t think they’d even be publishable in the West. There is also a lot of pretty blatant misogyny, barely covered up by the translation. So I would only recommend reading them if that won’t be a deal breaker for you.
Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land
I read All the Light You Cannot See a while back and loved the author’s style (plus watched the Netflix mini-series, also great), so I knew I was going to enjoy this book. It is billed as literary fiction, but it’s really a mishmash of literary fiction, historical fiction, and sci-fi.
The narrative structure really reminded me of Cloud Atlas, which is one of my favourite books of all time, and the different settings chosen by Doerr complemented each other in interesting ways. I particularly liked the siege of Constantinople arc, which could’ve been a book on its own. Overall, I thought it was a great book (not a hot take, it made a lot of ‘best of’ lists).
I’d love to try writing one of these ‘multiple stories in different times’ books, but I’m not sure I’d have the patience for all the research required by the historical fiction part!
Jack Vance, The Best of Jack Vance
I am still hunting for a copy of the Dying Earth books, but I picked this up in a used bookstore in Vancouver as the next best option in February.
Vance has a reputation as one of the old school sci-fi masters and I thought this was an excellent sci-fi short story collection with some really interesting concepts. I’d definitely read more by Vance in a heartbeat. A few pieces felt dated but I never got bored while reading them. I think my favourites were the exploration of revolt within a caste-based society in ‘The Last Castle’ and the mask-based culture imagined in ‘The Moon Moth’.
Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others
I’ve had Ted Chiang recommended to me a few times, but this was the first time I’d read him. While I do think he lived up to his reputation as a brilliant writer, there was something about these stories that left me cold at times. Chiang’s style is quite cerebral and intellectual, which isn’t what I’m always looking for in a story.
That’s not to say these aren’t great stories — they are exceptionally well-written and communicate complex ideas in engaging and interesting ways. I’m not sure many other writers could do what Chiang does. I just find his writing sometimes lacks the depth of emotion I prefer. It leaves me feeling a bit drained sometimes, even depressed.
That said, I did really love the eponymous ‘Story of Your Life’, the classic myth reimagined in ‘Tower of Babylon’, and the exploration of golems in ‘Seventy-Two Letters’.
Andrea Stewart, The Drowning Empire
If there were any books that I’d have skipped, I think it would’ve been this trilogy. However, I started the series a while back and I liked it enough that I wanted to finish it.
I’ll start off by explaining that the reason I would’ve skipped this trilogy isn’t any problem with the books themselves. I just don’t think I was the target audience. These books were more YA than what I typically read, the themes a bit softer and the characters not as deep or realistic (just my opinion).
I did really like the worldbuilding in The Drowning Empire, especially the bone shard magic that was the focus of the books. Ultimately, it was the exploration of this that got me through to the end. If you do read YA fantasy (even romantasy), I would definitely recommend these books as they’re an easy read with some cool worldbuilding.
Susanna Clarke, Piranesi
Maybe my favourite read of 2024? I really loved this book. It was a short, super quick read, but the story just felt so fresh. The world of Piranesi with its endless halls and tides reminded me a bit of C.S. Lewis’ world of pools in The Magician’s Nephew, with some Borges thrown into the mix. A harkening back to old school fantasy ideas.
I think even if you couldn’t get into Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (which I personally loved), I would still recommend this to you. Even if you aren’t a fantasy reader, I would recommend it. It is a book that feels like it is saying a lot without being in-your-face about it. Love!
Robin Hobb, The Liveship Traders
I love Hobb. I’ve read all the Realm of the Elderlings (RotE) books but I skipped this series on my first go-round because I wanted to keep reading about Fitz and didn’t think this would be any good! What an error on my part!
I’d heard over the years that Liveship Traders was maybe Hobb’s best installment and so I’ve been saving it like a bottle of well-aged wine for the right moment. Now that I’ve read it, I do think it’s one of her strongest trilogies, although it’s still a close call with the Tawny Man for me. I think she does an amazing job with the multiple POVs in these books, in contrast to the close focus on Fitz in the others.
Brilliant character work, so much strife and growth for all of these characters. The worldbuilding is fantastic, with a ton of depth to immerse yourself in. I can never put down her books once I get into them, just a fantastic read, you can’t find fantasy better than this.
Despite the fact that it took me 3 months to finish Ship of Destiny (stuck in the newborn trenches), it was a great read to end 2024! I really hope we get more RotE in the future…
To Be Read
As of writing this, I’ve just started Robert Jackson Bennett’s Foundryside trilogy and I’m really enjoying it so far. Here are a few other books on my TBR, in no particular order:
- Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth
- Guy Gavriel Kay, All the Seas of the World
- Vajra Chandrasekera, The Saint of Bright Doors
- Mark Lawrence, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn
- Haruki Murakami, The City and Its Uncertain Walls
- Pierce Brown, Red Rising (and sequels)
- Tad Williams, The Last King of Osten Ard Series
Anything you are looking forward to reading in 2025? Did you read any of the same books as me in 2024? Leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts!
