What I’m Reading Emily Brill-Holland

II like it when an author winks at you through the pages and dares you to keep up, and Stronach winks as soon as the main character dies.

’m a re-reader when busy, going back to trusted books when I don’t have the bandwidth for new work– the holidays are prime re-reading time. Having recently finished the third book, I’ve gone back to the beginning with Gideon The Ninth, the first in The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir.

Blurbed as ‘‘lesbian necromancers in space’’, Gideon has me laughing out loud, sending quotes to friends, dressing as the titular character for Halloween, cheering and desperately desperately wishing it wasn’t 3am and quiet as what is essentially a locked room murder mystery sprints to the finish.

2022 was a year of reading Aotearoa New Zealand speculative fiction for me, so it’s fitting that I have just finished The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach. Described as a ‘‘homecoming for New Zealand fantasy’’, this book has layers, and it has been a delight slowly unpeeling them. The worldbuilding is incredible: Hainak – this hot, aching, primarily biotech city – and its inhabitants, wrestling with identity, bad eggs and a broken system, but hellbent on stopping a plague from destroying this place that is theirs.

I like it when an author winks at you through the pages and dares you to keep up, and Stronach winks as soon as the main character dies.

I discovered the other night (late – this piece is just me telling on myself) that a companion collection of short stories has just released from Megan Whalen Turner.

The Queen’s Thief, her main series, is one of my top fantasy series and the first thing I mention whenever anyone asks for spec fic recommendations.

I cannot begin to count how many times I’ve read the third in the series.

I started Moira’s Pen immediately and finished it a little later, overjoyed to have returned to a beloved world unexpectedly.

Emily Brill-Holland has worked as associate editor for American literary journal F(r)iction and editorial assistant for Brink Literacy Project. She hosts a podcast, Please Fix This By Friday, and has been published in Dually Noted and Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy, volume 3. She is the guest editor of the fourth edition, published in October (Paper Road Press, RRP $30).