Books, Early 2026
Apr. 8th, 2026 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroThe Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso - She was hoping for a pleasant night out away from her infant daughter; she got a life-or-death struggle between gods in a Groundhog Day loop. This is a high fantasy, deep-worldbuilding queer romance that’s really about debating going back to work after you have a baby.
Song of Spider-Man by Glen Berger - Glen Berger was the co-writer of the incredibly expensive Broadway hot mess “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”, and I have to guess that at the end he made more money from this book than from the show. Bono and Edge come off well, as do the actors and production staff. The investors and producers don’t. And Julie Taymor…not so much. (He clearly tries to empathize with her, but the fact that no one told her “no” for virtually all of her involvement with the show was a lot of the problem.) Entertainingly, he seems a bit disappointed that the “2.0” version of the show that cut it down to a proper Broadway spectacle (which I saw; it was a hot mess but absolutely something that would draw the tourists) was actually reasonably well-received and ran for three years. This is an entertaining documentary of a car crash that’ll make you glad you weren’t there and also make you vaguely want to go listen to U2.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig - This has a great concept, of a library where you can choose to slot into lives where you made different decisions. Unfortunately, Haig isn’t actually a great writer. Apparently the rest of his work is self-help books (and it shows), but also this felt like reading a middlegrade book. He doesn’t trust the reader with anything and spells it all out over and over in obvious ways. (There’s a film When We First Met that follows a similar premise of changing one decision to change the present, and despite it being a direct-to-streaming goofy comedy/romance it manages to be more subtle and measured than this book.) I’d love to see a variant on this idea from someone who actually wants to write spec fic, rather than Chicken Soup for the Dimensional Traveler’s Soul.
Earthbound (Boss fight Books) by Ken Baumann - Every now and again I wander back to the bundle of these books, which are an entertaining mix of history of the game and the author’s autobiography. In this case, Baumann is a former child actor best known for The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which means nothing to me on its own but makes for an interesting backdrop to his recollections of playing Earthbound with his older brother and how he felt re-experiencing it.
Startup Hell by Caitlin Rozakis - A junior marketer walks into her boss’s office and discovers her boss summoned a demon, but had a heart attack before managing to sell his soul and the demon is trapped there. Turns out he’s a just junior salesdemon and also very cute, so they juggle romance with trying to find someone else at a tech startup willing to sell their soul so he can make his quarterly projections (and not get eaten). Further complicating matters, our heroine’s mother is basically Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and perpetually disappointed by her daughter’s lack of magical aptitude. This is a musing on what it’s okay to want out of life, a new vision for why demons buy souls, and a scathing send-up of tech startup culture. Preorder it, read it, give it five stars.
Song of Spider-Man by Glen Berger - Glen Berger was the co-writer of the incredibly expensive Broadway hot mess “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”, and I have to guess that at the end he made more money from this book than from the show. Bono and Edge come off well, as do the actors and production staff. The investors and producers don’t. And Julie Taymor…not so much. (He clearly tries to empathize with her, but the fact that no one told her “no” for virtually all of her involvement with the show was a lot of the problem.) Entertainingly, he seems a bit disappointed that the “2.0” version of the show that cut it down to a proper Broadway spectacle (which I saw; it was a hot mess but absolutely something that would draw the tourists) was actually reasonably well-received and ran for three years. This is an entertaining documentary of a car crash that’ll make you glad you weren’t there and also make you vaguely want to go listen to U2.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig - This has a great concept, of a library where you can choose to slot into lives where you made different decisions. Unfortunately, Haig isn’t actually a great writer. Apparently the rest of his work is self-help books (and it shows), but also this felt like reading a middlegrade book. He doesn’t trust the reader with anything and spells it all out over and over in obvious ways. (There’s a film When We First Met that follows a similar premise of changing one decision to change the present, and despite it being a direct-to-streaming goofy comedy/romance it manages to be more subtle and measured than this book.) I’d love to see a variant on this idea from someone who actually wants to write spec fic, rather than Chicken Soup for the Dimensional Traveler’s Soul.
Earthbound (Boss fight Books) by Ken Baumann - Every now and again I wander back to the bundle of these books, which are an entertaining mix of history of the game and the author’s autobiography. In this case, Baumann is a former child actor best known for The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which means nothing to me on its own but makes for an interesting backdrop to his recollections of playing Earthbound with his older brother and how he felt re-experiencing it.
Startup Hell by Caitlin Rozakis - A junior marketer walks into her boss’s office and discovers her boss summoned a demon, but had a heart attack before managing to sell his soul and the demon is trapped there. Turns out he’s a just junior salesdemon and also very cute, so they juggle romance with trying to find someone else at a tech startup willing to sell their soul so he can make his quarterly projections (and not get eaten). Further complicating matters, our heroine’s mother is basically Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and perpetually disappointed by her daughter’s lack of magical aptitude. This is a musing on what it’s okay to want out of life, a new vision for why demons buy souls, and a scathing send-up of tech startup culture. Preorder it, read it, give it five stars.
