It's a tradition in these parts, and I stick to it despite all adversity, apathy, alacrity or indeed ability: naming my personal top five albums of the last year, the Hartland Half-Ten. Here's 2025's edition, with bonus meditation on the "pop music is dead" meme (spoiler warning: probably isn't).

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For my money, the *definitive* year-end round-up.

Casella has recommended it to me before, but this episode finally prompted me to drop by my local bookstore and pick up Sea Now. Whole episode is a good listen. Give it a go for your year-end critical needs.

This is a very good discussion.

JENNY "ROMANCE SCHOLAR" HAMILTON SUPREMACY (The rest of the episode is good, too.)

Had a lot of fun talking to @casella.bsky.social on @mealofthorns.bsky.social about the year - in books, in the editing mines, in genre (and para-genre). Come for the general themes, stay for the book recs. Or, y’know, vice versa. And ask yourself, Sisyphus-like: what use is a year wrap-up anyway?

The last review of 2025 at @strangehorizons.bsky.social is a little treat: both a call-back to our week's worth of reviews earlier in the year on small presses affected by NEA defunding *and* a rare piece on non-speculative work which should still interest our readers. On Ada Limón. Happy holidays.

I recall @octavia-cade.bsky.social and @mlclark.bsky.social discussing all this on Critical Friends earlier in the year - and in the context of it being one way out of our current impasse(s).

Merry Christmas comrades from the @horrorvanguard.bsky.social crypt: share.google/JTT0xdSXafUH...

Every Christmas Eve, I read the festive Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle. This year, I’ve raided the master’s archives and uncovered some seasonal correspondence received at Baker Street some 10 years after the events of that case. Best of the season to all who celebrate.

There’s a review today, gang! Here’s Duncan Lawie on Tochi Onyebuchi’s surprising Harmattan Season (@tordotcom.bsky.social), in which “the ongoing story of collaboration, compromise, or collapse doesn't wrap up” - and productively so.

It’s the last issue of 2025 at @strangehorizons.bsky.social (I know, what even is time etc). What do we have for you in Reviews? Monday is the always incisive @octavia-cade.bsky.social on Syr Hayati Beker’s What A Fish Looks Like (@stelliform.press). “Is there one right way to navigate apocalypse?”

Including, improbably, me!

Safia H. Senhaji here, on Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto, with a really interesting self-reflection on how to be open to a new book: “I consider myself someone who can be comfortable in the not knowing.”

Niall Harrison discusses a selection of a couple dozen titles from his wide-ranging reading this year, ranging from Madeleine Thien to Eva Meijer to Jacek Dukaj. aqueductpress.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-...

Fun list, this. Sinykin on Guillory a special treat.

It's Wednesday, it's review time. Here's Seamus Sullivan on The Deep Forest by Sofía Rhei, translated for @timmi.bsky.social and Aqueduct Press by Kendal Simmons - 300 short stories in a single, slim, volume. "Reading and analyzing such an assortment of stories posed an interesting challenge."

Splendid review to start the week at SH today - @marmercurio.bsky.social on the curious Neo-Gothic of Slashed Beauties by A. Rushby (@berkleypub.bsky.social). “A novel filled with such potential should be a pleasure to untangle.”

Anyway, you should absolutely read Lola Olufemi's essay in this book from @plutopress.bsky.social

Good review to close the week, this: Shannon Fay on The Macabre by Kosoko Jackson (@harpervoyagerus.bsky.social). When is a horror a fantasy a literary heist a romance? When it’s an episodic thriller.

Wednesday's review is a bulletin from the redoubtable @rachelcordasco.bsky.social. On K.A. Teryna's collection,Black Hole Heart, translated for @patrickswenson.bsky.social by Alex Shvartsman: "genre-bending explorations of how protagonists deal with unusual and unexpected situations."

You know how this works: I do a Bluesky, it's a review, you click. This week's first piece is from none other than @chloroformtea.bsky.social, on Honeyeater by Kathleen Jennings (@torbooks.bsky.social). What emerges is a discussion of a novel that holds itself back. "Is it a weakness to be so coy?"

NEW PODCAST ALERT! Episode 18 of the Critical Friends podcast is here! This week, Dan Hartland, Cameron Miguel, and Nick Hubble discuss fantasy and its connection to history. "What can fantasy teach us about history writing and how can it change it?" Link ⬇️ strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

Nileena Sunil returns to @strangehorizons.bsky.social today to review the latest from Analee Newitz, Automatic Noodle. Nileena finds the book a little wary of depth: "Automatic Noodle fell short," she argues, "whenever it attempted to discuss real-world social issues."

Podcast penny for your thoughts? @thehubble101.bsky.social: “Even nostalgia is not necessarily bad if you don’t think that history is linear.” Cam Miguel: “But if the aim of fantasy itself is to be critical of how things currently are, it may not be prepared to meet that challenge.” Discuss.

If I say “this is a good one” then that makes it seem like I didn’t like other episodes which isn’t true at all, so what do I say here? Maybe: this is a particularly good one for me given my specific interests in relation to fantasy

Today at @strangehorizons.bsky.social, that @daviddaviddavid.com on Philip Fracassi's The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre. Our senior copyeditor, @jampersand.bsky.social, declared the book one of their favourites of the year - find out why!

"That’s kind of what modern literary criticism is: You read for complicities and you read for resistances, and you try and sort of negotiate what you can out of that." (@thehubble101.bsky.social)

🪐 NEW CRITICAL FRIENDS PODCAST! Over at @strangehorizons.bsky.social, I speak with @thehubble101.bsky.social and Cameron Miguel about fantasy and history - how are they related, and to what effects? Cam: “I would say that history writing is kind of baked into the nature of fantasy.”

It's always a good Monday when it's a Will Shaw review Monday ... especially so when it's of a book from Aqueduct.

On World AIDS Day, @docstevetaylor.bsky.social on HIV testing and the UK government’s new HIV Action Plan. Committing a further three years’ funding to opt-out ED testing in particular is super news. @savinglives.bsky.social sees the difference this makes in our patch, as do colleagues nationwide.

The week in reviews ends at SH with @ajodasso.bsky.social on Talamasca: The Secret Order, AMC's latest offering in the Immortal Universe franchise: "AMC has proved itself unafraid to take risks at the intersection of horror and speculative fiction. This daring has brought spectacular payoffs."

I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while: here’s @davidheb.bsky.social on the incomparable Nina Allan’s latest, A Granite Silence: “In her latest novel, Allan turns her attention to a historical murder case: The many worlds that spiral out from one tragic event.”

At @savinglives.bsky.social, we've spent months planning World AIDS Day in Birmingham, UK. Tomorrow, @ftcbirmingham.bsky.social meets to plan the five years until the UN's 2030 goal of eliminating new infections. Community awareness and policy success are linked. Abandoning WAD has material impact.

Good news: First review of the week! Even better news: It’s @thehubble101.bsky.social on Alix E. Harrow! “The dismissal of fantasy is compounded by the strategy of rhetorical containment in which novels in the genre by women are singled out.”

The last review of the SH week is from @ianjsimpson.bsky.social, and focuses on Jacy Morris's We Like It Cherry (@tenebrouspress.bsky.social). "Morris is writing about tradition and belief and survival; about the Other both within and outside of our immediate experiences." Spoilers, obvs:

Just (belatedly) listened to this and having read it twice now and discussed it at my book group, want to say that When There Are Wolves Again is not so central liberalist as portrayed. The central political action is a protest camp and the dominant values are countercultural rather than liberal 1/2

Wednesday's review is of the latest collections in the long-standing manga series by Shintaro Kago, Dementia. Shannon Fay finds "an absurdist comedy ... that uses a blend of SF and horror to get its point across." On ageing, care, and shortsightedness:

No donations for 2 days. Please help Archita reach her goal and get some semblance of security in this terrible time for her and her mother.

Wait, it’s Monday again?! Here’s the excellent Roy Salzman-Cohen on Maggie Nye’s The Curators (@nupress.bsky.social). A historical fantasy that defies forced unities, Roy inds that “The Curators refuses to answer many of its own questions” - but maintains a productive tension.

Friday’s review at @strangehorizons.bsky.social is from @erichendel.bsky.social, on Adam Oyebanji’s Esperance (@dawbooks.bsky.social in the US, @hachetteuk.bsky.social in the UK). It’s a novel, Eric finds, in which “alternate interpretations of the story emerge constantly.”

Archita is now so close to her fundraising target - and reaching it will help her rebuild her and her family’s life. Please help her get there if you can! I’m selfish: I want to see more of her writing. This campaign will help her in time to get back to what she loves - and is good at - doing.

Caught up with this while running errands this evening. Great episode that complicates but doesn’t dismiss the idea of hope in speculative fiction. And it was quite the surprise to hear my suggestion that SF&F publishing re-embrace the short novel mentioned at the very end.

Mine should be neither the first nor last response to this book! Maybe read the column; do read Dispelling Fantasies. “We now owe Joy Sanchez-Taylor something of a debt, because in her new Dispelling Fantasies she has laid a foundation stone which can help us move forwards rather than look back … “

Snap! Criticism time: @danhartland.bsky.social is back, this time reading Tochi Onyebuchi's HARMATTAN SEASON (@torbooks.bsky.social) with Joy Sanchez-Taylor's DISPELLING FANTASIES (@ohiostatepress.bsky.social)

🫰SNAP!🫰 My latest column for the excellent @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org, on Tochy Onyebuchi, Joy Sanchez-Taylor, and what to read to understand what you’re reading. How might we fill the “imagination gap” in our fictions?

Here’s Wednesday’s review, from Cameron Miguel on KJ Parker’s Making History: “This tale returns to the question of truth […] and […] the narrator challenge[s] the foundations of historical narrative.” A review by a reviewer for whom the book “was engineered in a lab”:

The website of Alter Magazine - a space for “new literary writing on science, technology, and progress from South Asia,” has just gone live: www.altermag.com The first long-form piece - my essay on the secret history of Indian science fiction - will be published on 22 Nov. Watch this space!

So it’s the Szalay. It may be the most consistently realised of the books, but how good a thing that is will be down to your taste. The judges clearly liked this depiction of “[a] self [who] remains a mystery to us, because it is a mystery to him.”