And so, we come to the destruction of the Ring. Surely, this is the end! Everything solved, happy fun time. Well… not so much1. This time, we’re covering III – Mount Doom and IV &…

What is the value of surprise in a story? Is it necessary?

A dark, poetic knot of a novel, Frozen Sparrows, translated lushly from Farsi by AJ Javaheri, is the first novel in English from the great Iranian author

In this episode of Critical Friends, the Strange Horizons criticism podcast, Dan Hartland is joined by Ryan Elliot and Rosanna Pendlebury, to ask questions about literary SFF. What is it? How do we…

Only in its 5th year of operation, the Le Guin Fiction prize has already become something of a critical darling, with very interesting shortlists and winners that rarely overlap with other genre aw…

Read "When There Are Wolves Again WINNER of the 2026 Arthur C. Clarke Award" by E. J. Swift available from Rakuten Kobo. * WINNER of the Arthur C. Clarke Award * * WINNER of the Best Novel Award from the British Science Fiction Association *...

Hey! This week there are essays and videos on books, reading, and a ton of reviewers that are new to me, and maybe to you! Plus, many great book rec lists....

I should have read this back when it came out. I then should have read this when I adored Jimenez’s second book, The Spear Cuts Through Water. But now is at least better than never, so here I…

Jake Casella Brookins Hello everyone, happy October! We’ve had a busy month behind the scenes at ARB—as often happens, the vagaries of publishing and reviewing schedules conspired to stack our queu…

This novel cues us to distrust metaphor.

Roseanna Pendlebury There are plenty of ways of talking about books that make me especially happy, and they all bear some baggage. I could say “trash”, which comes with a big side order of judgment…

For the past thirty years, substantial scholarly work has been done on the role of Historical Bias in Tolkien’s Silmarillion. Essentially, the premise is that Tolkien was deliberately present…

Illustration by jorahh , 2025 'What do you know of these horsemen, Aragorn?' [Gimli] said. 'Do we sit here waiting for sudden death?' 'I hav...

Here comes book six. Just two chapters this time, but they’re slightly chunky ones (at least by page count): I – The Tower of Cirith Ungol and II – The Land of Shadow. The story i…

Quality fantasy romp with a side of anti-capitalist fury Mike Brooks is a writer that rarely disappoints. He's one of the most consistently...