Let's Celebrate a Fantastic Story Medium!

librarian/bookseller rec'd: the buffalo hunter hunter by stephen graham jones. this book was on the seller's recs shelf at three different albany-area bookstores i visited around christmas last year; between that and the title i knew i had to give it a go, and god it was good. love a diary-keeper who is very obviously lying to his diary. love the thought that went into how the "cat man" functions. loooove good stab. slow burn revenge story protagonist of all time.

blurb buddies: curses by lish mcbride, who provided a blurb for the 2026 debut author book below. a beauty and the beast retelling where i really liked the leads and their romance, but the side characters felt very thin in ways that make me suspect this novel is names-hastily-filed-off fanfiction. like, the side f/f relationship was so unevenly written i don't think mcbride ever established that the feelings were requited? which, if these side characters are named something like korra and asami i guess that's not unacceptable, the audience will infer your intended dynamic, but when you've stripped them of that fandom context you kinda do need to do the work.

2026 debut author: apparently, sir cameron needs to die by greer stothers, tumblr's favorite weird cats owner. a cowardly knight's death is prophesied to cause the downfall of the evil sorcerer who wants to kill god, both of which the knight finds upsetting, but preventing his own death obviously takes priority over god's. an absolute delight! i read 95% of this in a three-hour train ride and was tempted to linger on the train to finish the last chapters. deeply weird and queer and fun; there was a twist i smiled and nodded at and two more that made me burst out laughing.

gothic fiction: we have always lived in the castle by shirley jackson. god. fucking incredible. fantastic character voices, subtly written. the agoraphobia is palpable, i wasn't surprised to learn that jackson struggled with it herself. it's a classic of the genre for good reason.

science fiction: zero sum game by s.l. huang. the author is a former hollywood stunt performer and graduated MIT with a bachelors in mathematics, which as interests could not be more perfectly aligned than in this sci-fi thriller: a woman with absurd math visualization powers uses those abilities to manipulate physics in her favor, kick ass and steal things (and/or people). she doesn't think about the childhood memories she can't recall until an encounter with another person with impossible abilities forces her hand. fun characters and a very hollywood thriller plot, i really enjoyed myself with this one.