I read quite a bit. I find it’s good for my mental health, and the best way for me to both kick off and end my day. I did this last year and enjoyed it, so once again, here are some micro-reviews of what I read this year by category.
RPG books
Pathfinder 2e Lost Omens Divine Mysteries by Misha Bushyager Et al. A super dense review of not only the gods of Golarion, but how divinity works. Maybe. Our nosoi guide is a bit fuzzy on some points, and gets distracted thinking about which gods have had secret make outs.
Pathfinder 2e Rival Academies by Sharang Biswas Et al. A review of some of Golarion’s schools of magic. The biggest surprise for me was the number of references to previous Adventure Paths. Also, the Convocation could be an awesome arc for so many campaigns.
Ruins of Azlant: Book 5 (Pathfinder 1e Adventure Path). In theory, a mega-dungeon underwater. In practice, my players chewed through almost all of it like paper, and short-circuited the last chapter. Still, a ton of fun!
Pathfinder 2e NPC Core by Raychael Allor. Books like this are such a great GM resource. I used the PF1 NPC Codex all the time to fill random slots without building a whole character on the fly.
Gatewalkers: Book 3 (Pathfinder 2e Adventure Path). I ran this for a stream, and wrote about it here. A (welcomingly) weird end to a weird AP that was a ton of fun to run.
Quest for the Frozen Flame: Book 3 (Pathfinder 2e Adventure Path). A really gratifying end for the AP, which I wrote about here.
Against the Aeon Throne: Book 1 (Starfinder 1e Adventure Path). I wrote about this book here.
Shining Kingdoms (Pathfinder 2e Lost Omens) A tour of the ‘main’ kingdoms in Golarion, with lots of hooks and NPCs for a GM that wants to craft a campaign on their own.
Galaxy Guide (Starfinder 2e) The first Starfinder 2e book! The most interesting thread to track was how the birth of a new elder god is messing up everyone’s Friday.
Interface RED Vol 4 (Cyberpunk Red). I love that R. Talsorian collects all of their free releases into a PDF. I’m also terrified that my players will read this and decide that they absolutely need a Punknaught.
Against the Aeon Throne: Book 2 (Starfinder 1e Adventure Path). This AP moves so freaking fast. I felt like I blinked and a whole book was done. I still need to write about this one, apparently?!
Battlecry! (Pathfinder 2e Rulebook) It’s much, much more than the two classes. There’s lots of campaign options for running a game during a war, which I now kind of want to do.
Starfinder Player Core (Starfinder 2e) It’s here! For anyone wondering if they need to get this if they have PF2’s Player Core, I’d recommend it. While many of the rules are reprints (as they should be), there’s lots that’s unique to the SF2 system.
Fiction
Godsrain by Liane Merciel. Pathfinder books are back! And it had the Iconics in it! I hope they continue this line!
Liar’s Island by Tim Pratt. A Pathfinder Tales book, the second in the Liar series. A conman and his magical sentient blade: The pairing you didn’t know you needed in your life.
We Solve Murders by Richard Osman. Hey, the tall guy I see on British panel shows wrote a book! And it’s good!
Troy by Stephen Fry. Fry’s takes on antiquity are some of my favorites.
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. A retelling of the classic from the perspectives of the daughter and a very grumpy majordomo, set in 19th-century Mexico.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Proof that hard sci-fi can also be hilarious and accessible. I knew we were in for a different kind of ride when the phrase “butt tube” featured heavily in the first chapter.
The Fractured Dark by Megan E. O’Keefe. Book two of The Devoured Worlds trilogy. You start looking sidelong at mushrooms after reading this.
The Dead Take the A Train by Cassandra Khaw, Richard Kadrey. More brutal than what I usually read, and I could take that. What I couldn’t take was a protagonist that kept choosing the absolute worst option when much better options were, like, right there. And sometimes more convenient.
Odyssey by Stephen Fry. The last of his Greek series, and as always, amazing. Also, was not expecting a rumination on GenAI in the afterword.
Masters of Death by Olivia Blake. Definitely an interesting read that didn’t go where I expected. Sometimes the cast of characters was a bit larger than it felt like it needed to be, but it all got tied together in the end.
Macbeth by William Shakespeare (Folger Library Edition). Seriously, if you’ve never picked up a Folger edition, do it. They’ve been my favorite since I was in braces. They’re cheap, portable, and have definitions and notes on the left-hand page.
The Bound Worlds (Book 3 of The Devoured Worlds) by Megan E. O’Keefe. A super gratifying end to the trilogy, and it really kept me guessing until the end.
Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz. An old school murder mystery that still plays with the usual tropes, and I can’t say more than that because, you know, mystery.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells. A re-read before I finally get around to watching the show.
Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid. If you’re looking for a faithful retelling of Macbeth, but from a different perspective… this isn’t really it. It keeps the structure of the story, but it’s its own thing. Enjoyed it, though the ending felt a bit flat.
Nightglass by Liane Merciel. YOU KNOW A BOOK IS A LOT WHEN YOU THINK THANK GOD THEY’RE IN THE DEVIL WORSHIPING COUNTRY NOW BECAUSE THINGS WILL CALM DOWN NOW. But it really made me want to play someone who escaped from Nidel…
Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret by Benjamin Stevenson. Once again, super twisty, super fun, and Aussie as fuck.
The Portable Beat Reader by Ann Charters. I picked up a copy of this way back in the 90s, and it lived in my backpack all through high school. I lost it at some point in my 20s, and it took me this long to finally find it again. If you can grab a copy, it’s a great collection of beat poets and writers, along with mini bios and some history along the way.
Short story collections
Ghost Stories: Collected by Stephen Fry. A collection of classic horror stories that I probably would have skipped, had they not been expertly narrated by Stephen Fry. Side note: I no longer feel bad about what happened to Ichabod Crane. Disney definitely scrubbed some details from that particular story.
Burning Chrome by William Gibson. Ten short stories that helped shape the rest of the Sprawl series (which I only just learned had an actual name).
Graphic Novels and Manga
Alley by Junji Ito. A collection of fever dreams that leave you vaguely unsettled and swearing off of NyQuil.
Hellboy, Vol. 3: The Chained Coffin and Others. I do love me some Hellboy, and I’ll die mad that the movie franchise died off.
Blame! Vol 2 by Tsutomu Nihei. Things continue to go both poorly and confusingly amid really baller backdrops.
The Liminal Zone 2 by Junji Ito. Things that are no longer okay: Dust, pulleys, childhood mentors, turtles.
Strangers in Paradise Vol 3. Volume 1: Hey, being in your 20’s is complicated, but you can get through it with friends! Volume 2: Okay, maybe you should get your crap together, because this is getting messy. Volume 3: WHY IS EVERYTHING ON FIRE WHY ARE YOU ALL LIKE THIS PLEASE GET THERAPY HOLY SHIT
Blame! Vol 3 by Tsutomu Nihei. Still gorgeous. Still haunting. I still have no idea what’s happening here. I mean, yes, I get the broad strokes, but there’s a lot of me just rolling with it.
Non-fiction
Container Gardening for Beginners by Max Barnes. New potential obsession, unless my deck is too shady.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac Container Gardener’s Handbook by Old Farmer’s Almanac. My hope was growing that maybe I can actually make vegetables happen.
Game Programming Patterns by Robert Nystrom. Legit my favorite book on coding, and the only one I’ll go back and reread now and then.
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green. A gripping and fast read about the world’s most deadly disease. Seriously, I finished this in record time.
Grow Food Anywhere by Lucy Chamberlain. I swear, I will grow something I can eat in the next year if it kills me.
Katie Plays Games 