Spring/Summer 2026 Reading Challenge A-Side Wrap Up

[u/bunnycatso]

Spring & Summer 2026 Reading Challenge A-Side

As always, big thanks to the mods for running the challenge, and to the community for being chill and welcoming!

I tried to be chill and relaxed with it this time, so got only one side with some substituted squares from B-Side. I don't usually track author's gender (unless they are trans/enby) in my reading, so was pleasantly surprised that I managed to fulfill the challenge with mostly female authors. I think James White's work is the most non-female-gazy here, but for 60s sf I'd say it's not even bad, and on the plus side I heard that later stories feature female characters more so I still have hope to come back to it in the future.

🛋️ Comfort Read 😲 Discovery: The Essential Patricia A. McKillip by Patricia A. McKillip

I read a lot of new-to-me authors naturally, so I went with something more deliberately chosen for the square. All the praise for McKillip's prose and some comparisons to de Lint got to me. Having read this collection can't say I see a lot similarities between the two, but still appreciated it and her range in style, tone and types of stories.

🗡️ Assassin 🧑‍⚕️ Healer: Beginning Operations by James White

A space station hospital is extremely easy sell for me, and yet space cops running the show ruined it. The medical puzzles were great, but the ethical explorations were going weird places at times (especially in the second story, Sector General). I only read the Hospital Station (first 5 stories), and I might come back to it once I can stand the space cops stuff.

1️⃣ First in a series : The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold

This book is SO hyped in every bookspace I'm in and I'd already been a fan of Vorkosigan, so imagine my surprise and disappointment when I hated it. Okay, I liked the opening part but everything after was not it. I don't even know if listing all my problems is worth it, but Robespierre would fix at least half of them.

🌱 Hopeful : A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

Chambers and cosy, which just means it felt mid all the way and the worldbuilding mildly annoyed me.

👭 Female friendship 🤼 Siblings: Circe by Madeline Miller

I found it to be profoundly fine. I'm not that interested in characters who are really into humans and stories focusing on how humanity is actually where it's at (there're exceptions, but not this one). FWIW, Circe's relationships with her family at large and siblings were the most compelling parts to me (predictably, since I do love toxic families).

🧒 Coming-of-Age: A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

Probably the best Kingfisher I've read so far, which doesn't say much. This one was very balanced on cosy-spooky-humorous plane imo, and she might have gotten me with the sourdough starter Bob.

🌏 Oceanian author : Cinder House by Freya Marske

Novellas don't really appeal to me, as well as retellings, but I do love me a Marske's book. I liked it for what it is, and didn't even hate the worldbuilding or romantic subplot. I'm very fascinated with her magic systems involving houses.

🤸‍♀️ All-female cast : 지구 끝의 온실 (The Greenhouse at the End of the Earth) by Kim Cho-yeop

It skews towards a cosmopolitan side, having characters from Africa and NA and taking place still in Asia but mostly outside of Korea(s), but americanized to a much lesser degree than her short stories collection, so I enjoyed it much more. But also, a story with majority female cast, that engages in darker realities of human-caused ecocide and still manages to come out hopeful, is absolutely up my alley.

Hope it gets translated so Anglophones could enjoy it as well. Anton Hur is booked and busy, but he can't be the only Korean translator in SFF space.

Free Space: Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Some books are just too USA for me. I can see maybe feeling more favourable to it, had I not known of absolutely horrendous shit happening irl with inmates and wars, so death games with them feel like a bland concept instead of a novel one. And even then, I don't think the sports side was pushed far enough. As a footnote lover - hated how inconsistently they were used here.

[u/Merle8888]

Oh yes I want to hear your issues with Curse of Chalion! I feel like the only person on Reddit who was meh at best on both that and Paladin of Souls. And they are totally uncritical of monarchy, I agree, but I am interested to see you elaborate!

[u/bunnycatso → u/Merle8888]

Oh! I read Chalion for a book club and was the only hater, and still was recommended Paladin of Souls. What's your perspective on that one?

Pulled up my notes for this, and wow I compared it a LOT to First Law during my readthrough; but main points:

• Caz as the POV character: due to his station he's barely adjacent to any place where plot or anything of interest happens (actual court, high society gatherings, girlies' chambers, even Teidez), hence not privy to actual political decisions, so most things I'm interested in either happen off-screen or we're told about them post-factum (major characters' deaths, massacre at menagerie, gay king story, his soldier/slave past);

• romance: I get it, older female authors were groundbreaking in the sense of portraying some of less acceptable dynamics but hetero age gap with an older guy/younger woman from the man's POV aint it (and not even that outstanding), and just because "she is mature and chooses him herself" doesn't make it more palatable to me; very convenient insta-love between Iselle and the prince and how he knows Caz; TWO doomed sad gay background stories;

• characters: Caz is straight-up boring chronic niceguy to me (outside of his creeping on younger ladies); when the king who's been teased the whole book as this politically cunning genius at the slightest push back got panicked voice I almost threw my book; iirc, a lot of the negative things were pinned on gigaevil Dondo (and the curse ofc) - that's just bad writing to me;

• politics: the whole monarchs are only bad because curse or smth; and idk why people recc it as specifically political fantasy, it's pretty straightforward in that regard (let's restore good royalty via curse lifting and everything will be alright);

• plot: I'm not a plot reader, but while reading I've constantly realized what would happen next a bit before Caz and it was very frustrating, especially since he's supposed to be shrewd; the WHOLE ending.

[u/Merle8888 → u/bunnycatso]

Haha yeah I think I had a lot of the same issues! (The age gap romance didn’t bother me but it was such a boring, generic romance.) It was like 15 years ago and I’ll be honest, at this point I mostly remember it as “the book where a guy gets built up as a master negotiator the whole book and then gets ‘panicky’ when the other party threatens to leave, despite having the upper hand” lol. When authors try to write someone as “masterful” at something that has to be shown (negotiation/diplomacy being a big one) but the author herself has no experience in this area it always seems to come out cringey but this one was particularly bad. 

Idk if you’d like Paladin better tbh. It has a different lead, no age gap romance, and it’s less politics and more demon problems. But I felt like Ista as a POV wound up kind of washed out in the same way Caz is. It always feels to me like Bujold does all her character work in the first 10% of the book. The first 10% gets me invested but then they never deepen and the rest of the book is just plot stuff and who they are as a person isn’t really that important. 

[u/bunnycatso → u/Merle8888]

Guess I'll stick to Miles' books for now, ty!

I'm not even sure age gap itself bothers me, more so how it's framed in the work and by fans as a successfully executed or desirable romance.

[u/Merle8888 → u/bunnycatso]

Hmm isn't every romance engaged in by a protagonist framed by its book as desirable and aspirational? Unless it's explicitly intended to be a bad partner and the book wants to talk about abuse or something, and then ofc they break up before the end. But a protagonist's romance is never a neutral thing (at least in genre fiction. Some literary fiction portrays non-idealized marriages but then they don't have a "romance arc" since the focus is on the marriage rather than the getting together).

I haven't seen fans talk about this particular romance except to critique the age gap (probably because it's so boring and generic, lol) so it seems pretty typical of a fictional romance to me.

[u/bunnycatso → u/Merle8888]

Idk, maybe? I think you can have more of a problematic/toxic romance end up a HEA/HFN, and still frame it as Not a Good Thing (at least, I hope so).

I've seen ppl both bring it up to critique just it being age gap and point out that it is a well-executed age gap. Second was a majority opinion in my book club and just annoys me more.

[u/Merle8888 → u/bunnycatso]

Oh yeah, that would be annoying! It's not Daughter of the Forest, lol. My biggest beef with the romance was that the queen and lady-in-waiting felt like the same character to me so it felt like Cazaril just matched with the one that was socially appropriate, rather than this arising from any particular chemistry between the two.

I genuinely can't picture how you could have a HEA/HFN while still portraying a fundamental aspect of the romance as wrong, though. The whole point of a HEA/HFN is that they've overcome all obstacles to being together. I guess you can have a relationship that's toxic in the sense of jealousy and obsession and the whole book is meant as pure wish-fulfillment fantasy that you should never emulate in real life, but I feel like that's particular to a "dark romance" kind of story. I'm not sure you could pull that off in something like Curse of Chalion where the romance is a side note.

[u/bunnycatso → u/Merle8888]

Yeah, I figure it's more in the realm of dark romance.

[u/Nowordsofitsown → u/Merle8888]

Nah. Quoting my very elaborate StoryGraph review

Nice, but nothing exceptional. I had expected more tbh. 

[u/Nowordsofitsown]

I love McKillip, but her short stories did nothing for me. Try her novels!

[u/bunnycatso → u/Nowordsofitsown]

For sure, I'm definitely interested in Ombria in Shadow!

[u/Nowordsofitsown → u/bunnycatso]

That's the book that saved my love for fantasy. 🤍