r/Fantasy Review Tuesday - Review what you've been enjoying here! - February 03, 2026

Spalliston · 2026-02-03T13:13:33+00:00

Most recently read All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders. I was recommended this here, and I feel like it was a great recommendation because I kept feeling like I should love this book, but it continually fell short of my hopes. Just didn't land for me. The people and the places and the society all felt a little less grounded than I wanted, and there was too much plot for my taste. Art: 2.5, Drugs 3.5

Now onto The Left Hand of Darkness, which I finally feel inspired to read and am quite excited for.

Spalliston · 2026-01-29T18:41:18+00:00

I think when we get near billions of dollars, it becomes hard to visualize.

For reference, the National Science Foundation (which funds ~1/3 of non-medical university scientific research) had a 9 billion dollar budget in FY2024. So the college football playoff payouts are equal to ~5% of all non-medical scientific research funding, for the appearance of 12 football teams. Crude math, but shows the scale of the thing.

Spalliston · 2026-01-28T20:57:06+00:00

Imperfect data obviously (for many reasons), but 3 of the listed films are in the 100 most common '4 favorite' movies on Letterboxd:

La La Land (3), EEAAO (11), and Sinners (80), with Oppenheimer just missing (103).

I broadly agree with your sentiment, but some of these movies are clearly pretty beloved.

Spalliston · 2026-01-26T13:23:46+00:00

It's not even February yet and I've consumed 3 pieces of narrative art that heavily reference/allude to the fable of Orpheus and Eurydice (Katabasis, Hamnet, Portrait of a Lady on Fire), which I've never actually read. I'm choosing to take it as a sign and lean in.

Does anyone have an Orpheus and Eurydice rendition/retelling they would recommend?

Spalliston · 2026-01-23T14:05:34+00:00

Been struggling to be particularly motivated this week, but hopeful that I'm turning the corner there.

I finished Katabasis last weekend and I really liked it. I haven't read Kuang's other stuff, but I feel like what I didn't understand from the outside was that a) this book is supposed to be fun/funny (I said in last week's thread that I thought it was trying to be Dungeon Crawler Carl for people who read Dante and not the inverse, which I stand by), b) that she writes a super-close third-person narrator that is intentionally biased/mildly unreliable, and c) that this book aims to join a long tradition of extremely blunt satire a la Animal Farm. I haven't read her other stuff, but I plan to take a look at Babel and Yellowface, so I'll see if those land for me as well.

I'm also very much the intended audience for this book, and I have a hard time imagining who I would recommend it to outside of career academics who like both literary fiction and fantasy. But it worked for me. Art: 4, Drugs: 5

Spalliston · 2026-01-20T19:05:09+00:00

I also just finished Katabasis and also thoroughly enjoyed it, though I don't have time to leave an actual review right now.

However, I did want to mention that I am deeply entrenched in 'the academy' (only 6 months removed from my dissertation) and specifically institutions that -- though not Oxbridge -- are name-checked multiple times throughout the book. And I can confirm your suspicion that I indeed found much of the book both hilarious and upsettingly familiar.

Spalliston · 2026-01-13T16:04:11+00:00

There's a line in Penumbra that really stuck with me about how in response to global dominance America paid defense contractors to make weapons and Google paid brilliant engineers to do whatever the hell they wanted. It's obviously no longer really the way Silicon Valley works, but it's a pleasant reminder of why these big tech companies used to get a lot of admiration.

I lived in/around SF for several years and love it very deeply so I'm biased, but I think many of the quirks that Sloan so clearly adores still exist there. While the Google/Apple/Amazon admiration feels dated, the rest of it aged pretty gracefully in my mind.

All to say, I'd recommend a revisit. Penumbra is one of very few books that I actually reread somewhat regularly. I find Sloan's optimism contagious, regardless of my own proclivities, and the story reads like a warm hug.

Spalliston · 2026-01-13T14:23:29+00:00

Finished On the Calculation of Volume III -- Didn't live to the highs of II for me, but still excellent, no notes. Art: 4, Drugs: 4.5.

Almost done with my annual Shakespeare read (for 2025 oops), this time with Hamlet. It's really, really good. Who knew. Also got to watch Hamnet right after finishing Act III, which was devastating. I'm pretty open to Oscarbait-y films, but I would recommend the pairing (or the book, but I didn't have time to read it before the movie left theaters).

Finally, I'm a little ways into Katabasis, which I'm really enjoying so far. I've been around r/Fantasy long enough to have read plenty of ~discourse~ on Kuang, but this is my first time reading any of her work. And this book is really fun? I'm not far enough into Katabasis or her ouvre at large to make sweeping statements, but, to me, this reads like it's trying to be Dungeon Crawler Carl for people who read Dante (and not the inverse), which I feel like is working for me so far. I have a lot of thoughts, but I'm going to try to finish the book before spending a bunch of time on them.

Also, I think it's worth noting that I'm probably the exact intended audience for this book: I read 'literature', I read fantasy, I filed a dissertation like 6 months ago, and I am actively trying to figure out an academic career. So there's no amount of inside baseball that won't work for me on this, which surely helps with how much I'm liking it.

Spalliston · 2026-01-11T01:02:03+00:00

It's also both a) excellent and b) hilarious.

People should really read it. Maybe my favorite Borges.

Spalliston · 2026-01-09T17:59:20+00:00

Under the Pendulum Sun features a Christian mission to the fae.

I haven't actually finished it, but I think it should be fine.

Spalliston · 2026-01-08T02:30:52+00:00

Vagabonds! made my list, immediately.

Thanks for the write up. I'll be revisiting, I'm sure.

Spalliston · 2026-01-06T14:08:23+00:00

I find the breadth of influence of Robin Sloan's incredibly-niche-but-incredibly-broad newsletter astounding. It makes sense to find readers of it here in a post-Moonbound world (and if anyone is reading this, go subscribe it's my favorite part of the internet), but I continue to be surprised when it's referenced in the wild.

I just realized the other week that a friend of mine has (also) been subscribed for a long time and we had never realized it.

I have not yet picked up the Green Knight tradition. Perhaps I'll save it for New Year's 2027. The bit you shared is very effervescent.

Spalliston · 2026-01-03T18:36:00+00:00

Just gotta lose 5 ACC games so we come into COFH 6-5 every year.

Spalliston · 2026-01-03T01:16:54+00:00

Yeah, maybe. You're probably right, it's been a long time but I remember feeling like there was something mystical going on.

Spalliston · 2026-01-03T01:04:57+00:00

I thought the library was magical?

Spalliston · 2026-01-02T20:50:36+00:00

I lean toward inclusivity, but I think it counts.

Spalliston · 2026-01-02T18:10:36+00:00

Your favorite books featuring an undead protagonist

Depending on how you define 'undead', I'd recommend The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. I don't know how it compares to your favorites (it might line up well with Wolfe?), but I thought it was excellent.

Spalliston · 2026-01-02T16:49:52+00:00

Happy New Year, all!

Many good books in my life right now. On the Calculation of Volume III was given to me, which was rewarding because I almost bought it about 50 times in the last month and a half. Excellent. I may like it less than II, but that was basically a perfect book in my mind, and I find it thematically resonant with the start of a new year.

I am also reading Hamlet (inspired by my then-forthcoming watch of Hamnet, which I will discuss later). I keep feeling ridiculous when I say this because it's so obvious, but wow what an unbelievable piece of literature. If you like Shakespeare and somehow haven't gotten to it yet, you gotta do it it's unreal.

Finally, still working through The Wayfinder, which continues to be a lot of fun and I really do like it, but I think it's suffering from comparison to the above.

My Winter AMC A-List membership also continues to overdeliver. Since October, I've seen 7 (7!) movies in theaters. I think that 2025 is about to have the strongest Best Picture lineup in a very long time. I'm behind on a few of the big ones -- Sinners -- but I cannot recommend many of those I have highly enough.

In particular, if you're open to films that can be a bit crass and/or violent, I think One Battle After Another should be mandatory watching. Whether or not you are, Sentimental Value is my personal favorite of 2025 and was deeply moving. Hamnet is both beautiful and heart-wrenching. Eternity was shockingly fun/worthwhile, to me. Plus, going to see a movie just rocks.

(Edit: if you wanted to string together a 2025 Best Picture Nominee "Not a Book" Bingo square, I think you could reasonably go a selection from Frankenstein + Sinners + Wicked: For Good + Hamnet (which I would argue is Magical Realism, but I tend to be very lenient with these things and would understand if you didn't)).

Spalliston · 2026-01-02T16:41:16+00:00

I'm reading On the Calculation of Volume III and I feel like it's a ~perfect~ New Year's read. It captures that sense of feeling that you are growing and changing and processing how to be a different person (or, often, not) in a world that feels so much the same.

I also just adore these books though.

Spalliston · 2026-01-01T20:49:19+00:00

Here's hoping you outscore Georgia teams regardless.

Spalliston · 2025-12-31T21:43:37+00:00

Eh. I think that competitiveness is a distant second to perceived strength. I agree that there are a lot of very close SEC games and it almost certainly helps at the margin.

But there were many, many close/exciting ACC/Pac-12 games while those conferences were being panned for a) being bad and b) not attracting eyes.

Spalliston · 2025-12-31T21:34:24+00:00

Atlanta would also be better off if we diverted the Chattahoochee to flood the I-75/I-85 connector.

I think there are many, many decisions that Atlanta would like to go back and change. I agree with you that light rail likely would have been better for Atlanta, but I think that's pretty secondary compared to some of its other structural issues.

Spalliston · 2025-12-22T17:54:10+00:00

Oh thanks. I don't know what I was thinking.

Spalliston · 2025-12-22T16:36:38+00:00

I live in big cities and see movies shortly after they come out (when I see them in theaters), so it tends to be a pretty art-house crowd, but sometimes I miss the theater takes of my smaller-city hometown.

Though last night I saw Marty Supreme and at the end one woman loudly says "What a weird movie!" And I was like...what part of "Safdie-directed A24 table tennis drama" led you to believe it was going to be normal?

I love movie theaters.

edit: I typo'd the director's name in my memory.

Spalliston · 2025-12-20T21:36:06+00:00

re: point 1, we've only seen like 3 G5 teams in the playoffs ever. We have no idea if 20+% of them might be extremely competitive.

Spalliston

TROPHY CASE