Alphabet Squadron - Alexander Freed

A long time ago, and far far away, I spent a non-zero amount of time reading the X-Wing series of Star Wars novels. The combination of tight plotting, complex, grey-edged characters, and some bloodily kinetic space dogfighting was compelling stuff, and at the time I couldn't put it down. Alphabet Squadron carries the flame on from that series, gifting the reader with a veritable rogues gallery of pilots, each laced through with enough grudges, secrets and trauma to keep any psychiatrist happy. And it lets them loose on the margins, dealing with pirates and scoundrels and defectors and traitors. And that's the good guys. It does so within the frame of the Star Wars universe, but gives that universe a coat of grit, exhaustion and blood over the shiny paint of X-Wings. It is also, and I can't say this enough, really a very good book. 

Yrica Quell is probably the closest thing to a protagonist we have here; though the book does split into multiple viewpoints within the pilots of what becomes Alphabet Squadron, Quell's is the first, and I think the one with the most page time. And when we meet Quell, she's in a Republic prison camp, being given therapy by an ex-torture droid, trying to get back into the cockpit of a starfighter, trying to prove herself, because she's a defecting Imperial pilot. Quell is someone who always seems one hammer blow away from breaking, often unyielding, always trying to get the best out of her fellow pilots, but not always bridging the gap between what she thinks they should be and who they actually are. Her paradigm is rooted in the model of order, of a galactic superpower speedrunning repression, of a military that requires unified models of conduct and thinks its hardware is worth more than its pilots. The New Republic, with roots in a guerrilla insurgency, doesn't have those institutions, doesn't operate the same way, and Quell is less a fish out of water and more a fish rapidly descending into an acid bath. Still, she's trying her best - and watching her work with agency and intentionality to change who she is, and who she is perceived as, is a joy. That said, there are hints, even as the story opens, that Quell has some secrets up her sleeve. In this, she's by no means alone, but hers may be the most impactful. Still, as I say, she isn't alone, surrounded by a squadron of malefactors, malcontents, iconoclasts and outright pirates. Each of them has time to come up onto the page, and each of them takes that time to let us know that they're real, that their actions matter, and each aside and each small story (or...lie) tells the reader a little more about the folks we're dealing with. They're people. Not always people we'd like, but always people we can empathise with, people we can understand. Interestingly, this is true to an extent when we're occasionally shown the perspective of the antagonists, the generally malevolent Shadow Wing. We know them a little from Quell, but the Imperials have their own perspectives as well, their own truths. Victims of a war they can't bring themselves to walk away from, and perpetrators of sufficient horror that they don't know if they can or should. They're given humanity, but not excused. 

Because this is a story that wants to talk less about the glory of war, though there is some of that, too, in the graceful dance of fighters in the black, and more about the consequences, about the costs. About people making decisions that they regret (or don't) for the rest of their lives. About friendship, about what people owe to one another. About the price of rebellion, the price of moral clarity, and the price of acquiescence in the face of atrocity. Alphabet are on a mission, but it's not entirely a mission of justice, being just as much one of revenge. They all have their reasons, and as they come to know each other and be honest with each other about why they are where they are...we stand alongside them. 

 I'm not doing a great job of selling this, but let me say this. It's possibly the best Star Wars war story I've read, including those original X-Wing books that I loved so much I almost wore the pages out. It's bloody and brutal and ambiguous and messy and heartfelt and true. And every so often, there's a space battle that makes you sit up and feel that tightness in your chest as you wait to see if everyone survies. It's a story with teeth - emotional and otherwise. It's a story that wants you to think, that wants you to feel, that wants you to fall into it. And it is, at the end of the day, a bloody great story - I went off to read the sequel immediately, and I hope that you do as well. 

A Coup of Tea - Casey Blair

This one is something a little different, or at the very least, a little different for me. A Coup of Tea fits the mould of cozy-fantasy, giving us a protagonist who, really, just wants to live their own life, without huge amounts of hassle from the world at large. It does diverge from that theme, as she's repeatedly forced up against wider issues, from exploitative employers to that most dread of foes...gentrification. But at its core, this is a book about family, about finding yourself, about kindness and the ripples that kindness can cause in the world. Less "swords and dark magic" and more "learn to be a decent human and also occasionally some magic!"

 Miyara is a princess. Notably, she's a princess in among a gaggle of other princesses, all of whom are smart or athletic or political or responsible or some combination of all of the above. Miyara doesn't know what she is, exactly. But she's trying to figure it out. And the pressure from her family, to fit into their own expectations of who they think she is or could be, is, well, rather intense. In the end, Miyara decides that whoever she is, she isn't Princess Miyara. And disappears, to go find herself, doing, well, something else.  The story follows her struggles as she tries to figure out what that Something Else actually is, partially through the medium of tea; the centre of the narrative is Miyara's struggle for personhood outside of the institution formed around her like a shell. Smart, thoughtful, kind, anxious and a little sharp, Miyara is someone whose head it's a pleasure to spend time in - which is just as well, because she does have a penchant for analysing how she's feeling in real time. As our view into the world, her exisitng privilege is helpful - becausue she's as confused as we are about why people are doing things the way they are, how society is set up, how the less fortunate live, how the more fortunate live rather well, how magic and power and social privilege intertwine, etc. Her insulation from the Real World (tm) lets us lift our ignorance of the world along with her, which makes for a decent read.

And what a world it is; one part steampunk insanity, with cooking appliances powered by magic and wizard-enforcement, and one part just people going about their day, going to cafe's and trying to pay the rent, and complaining about the fact that paying the rent keeps on getting harder. There's a contemporary strand running through this universe of wonder, a strand that worries about people getting priced out of neighbourhoods, worries about the cost of groceries, worries about  friends and relatives and how theyre making ends meet. There's a thread that wants to attack power and systemic repression and bigotry in there too, and a thread that looks at economics and power and what the cost of doing business means on the ground. It's a vibrant, colourful world, filled with quirks, and, yes, filled with magic. But it also looks quite a lot like our own, in ways that matter - a tale that resonates is built from a world whose details feel real, feel like they matter, feel genuine and true. And Blair builds that world for us through Miyaras's eyes, leaving behind a living tapestry of joy and sorrow, and...again...tea,

The story...well, it starts fast, then gives you a view into the quieter universe that Miyara can use to build herself up, and find her own truth. But it doesn't flinch away from high stakes. It wants to use fantasy to talk about big issues, and it achieves that, in a gentle way that seeps off the page and into your bones. It's a story that I found myself unwilling to stop readiong, because I wanted to see how it would play out. Whether Miyara would find a version of herself she wanted to be, whether a Princess could become a Tea Master. Not whether the world could be saved or not, but if a person could be, if a neighbourhood could be, and how that could happen. 

In short, it's a good time - a warm, emotional book that serves as a paean for empathy and kindess, families (found and otherwise), and more than a splash of magic. Give it a whirl, possibly with a blanket and a cup of tea of your own! 

Ship Of Smoke And Steel - Django Wexler

Ship of Smoke and Steel  is the first in the Wells of Sorcery series by Django Wexler. I’ve always got on with Wexler’s work, and I still encourage anyone who wants a blend of the Napoleonic Wars and a hard-edged military fantasy to check out his Thousand Names series. This book is something a little different - focused on a tighter cast of characters, and pitched at the YA market, with a dash of sapphic romance in between some adrenaline-packed magical action. 

Isoka is our protagonist, and Isoka is a killer. She’s young, but she grew up with nothing, and she’s determined to make something for herself, and for her younger sister. And Isoka does that, at least at the start of the tale, by being a ward boss for her city’s organised crime syndicate. She’s ruthless, focused, and disinclined to think of people outside of their benefit as leverage.Except for the aforementioned sister, who doesn’t know that her sister uses extortion, blackmail and more than a soupcon of violence to keep her in a decent lifestyle. Isoka gets to do this because she is, ha, magical. The kind of magic that lets you spring crackling blades out of your hands with a thought, or shield yourself with eldritch armour. Always a convenient thing for someone who needs to break a few heads. Unfortunately for Isoka, being an unregistered magic user is quite, quite criminal - and being a registered magic user probably wouldn’t end well for her, assuming she wasn’t executed on the spot. So she has to keep her magical light under a bushel. This makes for an interesting tension, as she works to resolve issues with the minimum amount of fuss, but has a penchant to shift quickly into a tide of lethal violence when things don’t go the way she’d prefer. Isoka is smart, funny, and, over the course of the story, begins to shift away from being quite such a utilitarian personality. But you can see where she’s coming from, and empathise, if not sympathise, with her in the many odd situations that she ends up in.

Speaking of situations - Isoka, for her many and varied sins, finds herself exiled to the magical ship Soliton, a mysterious ancient wreck that appears at various city ports, accepting a tithe of magical youth. It’s also huge, and presumably very powerful, and Isoka’s city government would rather like to take hold of it, so they can use it to, you know, conquer the world. The world…well, the world is largely the city and the ship, for the purposes of this book. We do get some quiet hints as to the nature of other places when we meet ancillary players and hear some of their background, but much of the wider space is names and traits. That doesn’t mean they aren’t interesting - I’d definitely like to hear more.  But the ship. Oh, that, Wexler describes perfectly. A towering edifice, filled with mysterious systems which are, in partial decay, swarmed by semi-aquatic monsters which serve as food source and threat all at once, run by a council of ne-er-do-well youth with the power to move faster than thought or incinerate their enemies with a ball of fire. It’s a complex, living breathing place, and every level of it that we move into feels different, differently dangerous, differently wonderful. The Soliton is something special beneath all the rust and wrack and ruin and…monsters, but quite what that is, remains rather open to question. Still, it’s a grounded, physical sort of place, and the visceral violence of monster hunts and duels serves as a backstop on how much like civilisation it is not. 

The story…well, we won’t spoil that. But Isoka, stuck on a boat from hell, due to crimes she absolutely did commit, has to think fast in order to build herself a power base, build herself a life, and avoid getting eaten by monstrous crabs. And she may even manage to find love along the way, or something like it. And it’s an adventure; much like Treasure Island, Isoka is always managing to get herself into and mostly out of trouble, struggling to build alliances with unworthy associates, and a friendship or two, which may or may not be something real. This is fast paced fantasy, always with a hook to get you to the next page, never lettoing go - and it’s fun. I’d say if you’re on the lookout for a new series, this one is worth a try.

A Sword of Gold and Ruin - Anna Smith Spark

I've been a fan of Anna Smith Spark's for years, ever since her Court of Broken Knives , which I hand-sell as "Kind of like if a heavy metal album was also a fantasy series". But she's kept going since then, and A Sword of Bronze and Ashes, a liminal, dreamlike, murderous, epic work about a woman stepping away from heroism and villainy, such as they were, and diving back in to save her family, was a surprise hit for me. This sequel, A Sword of Gold and Ruin takes the best of that story and crafts something new and beautiful and terrible with it. This is a book that wants to talk about people, about characters and stories, the stories we tell each other and ourselves which also happen to be the stories of us, and it wants to do so while looking at heroism, at blood-on-the-dirt villainy, and at how choices can make us mix one in with the other.

Our protagonist, you see...well, now she's Kanda. Mother of several girls, of varying ages. Wife to a man who is, well, stolid and good and delighted to be with her. But Kanda has been a few other things as well. She's been one of the six swords of Roven, a Camelot-esque dream that is revealed in flashbacks across the course of the narrative. They were made by and did the bidding of their Lord, fighting monsters and unseating tyrants and being general do-gooders. And she was also something else - a hardened killer at the front of an army that tore down cities, that burned for the sake of burning, killed for the sake of killing, built their own monsters and set them free. Until she wasn't, any more. Until the freedom to be a monster felt like a prison cell, and Kanda walked away, to make something else, a different life, a different love, a different family, neither gods nor monsters therein. Well, not right now anyway. And I don't think I can giuve much away by saying this is a very character driven book. We're in Kanda's head, while she examines herself, her preconceptions. What she wants. And what she wants for her children. Whether one is too gentle or another too keen to pick up the sword. Whether Kanda herself can feel pride in the works of her children, even as they step outside her, perhaps step beyond her. Whether that pride is tainted by her history or enhanced by it, and whether her daughters mistakes are their own to make. Kanda is a woman filled with broken panes of glass, looking back over a history that blurs into myth, trying to unpick fact from fiction in her own life, even as a new story builds itself around her and before he (and, whisper it, perhaps, without her). Kanda is a mother and a wife and a hero and a killer, and wrestles with her needs and those of others in a world still holding to the boundaries of the unreal - where a buried skull beneath the door of a new home can keep evil away, and a new hall built around the bones of a hanged man can exert malevolent power. What the truth is, is difficult to unpick, but in a sense it doesn't matter. Because Smith-Spark's prose carries that story directly into your brain. It has a precise, lyrical quality we see in Greek myth, and it rolls off the tongue as if it should be spoken or sung aloud. It's a tale in form as well as function, harking back to old traditions, built in a new way.

It is, as I say, rather tightly focused on Kanda, her family, and how they manage to get along in the face of what they survived in the first book in the series, and what they plan to do next. Things Do Happen, but to me it feels like these are events meant to let out a little more of our characters, show us a little more of who they are under pressure or under arms or in each others arms. Which isn't to say that those Things aren't ,momentous in their own right, don't tell us a tale that is likely to draw a gasp or a smile or a wry chuckle. This is a story of blended together worlds, where dragons and knights and killers and daughters walk hand in hand, and are sometimes the same thing. There's a lot going on. It just also serves the characters, gives us ways to see these people as they build their own palaces, or their own graves. It's thoughtful, incisive prose, wrapped in an elaborate, heady style that makes everything feel like a saga or a fireside tale. And it's compelling stuff - I couldn't put it down. I suspect if you enjoyed the first book in this series, you won't be able to put this one down either, and so...yes, highly recommended.

See you in 2026!

 Hope all our readers have a great end to 2025. We're taking a bit of time to recharge, and we'll see you all in January!

Shadows Upon Time - Christopher Ruocchio

Well, this is it. The final book in the Sun Eater series from Christopher Ruocchio. Shadows Upon Time. Its been a long time coming, and has a lot of expectations to live up to. And, you know what, for the most part it does a great job of meeting or even surpassing those expectations! It's the end of our journey with Hadrian Marlowe, sometime aristocrat, sometime arena fighter, sometime military commander, occasional agent for a universal force of creation, and a proud father.  That journey has been...eventful. Full of spiritual revelations and physical torments,  full of friendships, many of which ended in bloody circumstances. Full of comrades-in-arms, and the love (and loathing) of family, adopted and otherwise. Hadrian has been a busy boy, but his end, or at least the end of his story, is finally here. I've been trying to get people to read this series since way back in 2018 , and I'm unashamedly enthusiastic about the world and the characters, so seeing the end of the line is, for me, bittersweet. 

Still! We're here to talk about if the book is any good or not. And, perhaps surprising no-one reading this...yes, I think it is, actually. Equally unsurprisingly, I wouldn't recommend reading it unless you're already up-to-date on the series. This is the conclusion of thousands of pages of world-building, character relationships and Deep Lore(tm); if you walk into this book with no idea what's going on, you're not going to have a good time. Stop. Go and read Empire of Silence instead, and come back when you've caught up. OK? The rest of you....look, I assume you're here because you're fans. You stuck with it through the more esoterically spiritual pieces, and the occasional bouts of misery and torture, and all the way through blowing up a bunch of cool stuff, and the end of the story of more than one of your favourite secondary characters. And you want to know whether Ruocchio sticks the landing, or if you're going to be yelling about this series at your friends next time you're out for a beer, and declaring the whole thing to be bullshit.

I can't speak for you, but I have been talking about this book over beer, but only to tell people that it's a damn fine wrap up to the series. So yay!

We get more Hadrian Marlowe here. A man who has suffered deep loss, made into an avatar for forces, for lives, for singularities whose essential nature he struggles with, from time to time. A metaphor for faith? I think so, yes. As Marlowe struggles to accept his own place in things, the sacrifices that his role demands from both those around him and himself, one can see a metaphor for the divine. Well, it's not quite a metaphor, since Marlowe reaches out for that idea quite explicitly, at one point having a discussion about divinity with one of his comrades-in-arms, trying to map from his Absolute onto their understanding of the world. There's shades of C.S. Lewis here, and it can be a bit heavy-handed in the prose, but I found Hadrian's internal struggle with the idea of his responsibility as an avatar of everything to be quite compelling. The effort to show us his journey through the liminal, secular spaces and into a more tranquil understanding of his own truth pays off because it's been built over the entire series - we've seen the man Marlowe is now, built form the ground up. It still feels like a bit much, a bit on the nose, but I can see what Ruocchio is reaching for in the story he's trying to tell, and it mostly works, and when it does, it's a powerful story of self-discovery and spiritual and mental change. And to be fair, if it sometimes feels a little preachy, it's not only that. Hadrian remains a compelling, flawed protagonist, an unreliable narrator seemingly often uncomfortable in the role he finds himself playing. And that shines through, it gives him some, well, humanity as a protagonist. If he's a hero, of sorts, out of legend, he's also a man trying to figure out what is right, and indomitable in his desire to see his duty done.

And the world. Well, the universe really. It's been built over the course of the series, a cavalcade of distinct cultures, mostly human (or...human approximate), with some deeply alien aliens thrown in for good measure. It's a rich tapestry, with a history lurking in the background that I'd love to hear more about, but what we *have* promises stories on top of tall tales on top of legends. And you can see that universe shift and twist and change as the story comes to a close, things are fundamentally different, things will never be the same, and the consequences of that, the ripples of that all feel real.

And the story...I'm not going to speak to it more than I already have, but I will say that it has some vicious emotional lows, and some wonderful highs. There's passion and truth and joy and more than a splash of sorrow in there, and it's going to make you feel for sure. And the ending...well, I think it works. I think Hadrian's story ends how he'd want it to, and not least because he's the one apparently writing his own story. This has been a fiercely human, thoughtful, explosive journey, and the end is fiery, honest, and compelling. Go, read it - you won't regret it.

Back next week!

 Everyone here has the flu, so we'll be back next week - sorry, everyone out there!