The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2025, pt.4: Lisa Tuttle

 

Pleasures of Reading in 2025

By Lisa Tuttle

  

 

Because I am still writing a monthly roundup of SF/Fantasy/horror books for The Guardian, nearly all my reading has been of books in those genres, published this year, with an eye to review.  Because I have less than 700 words and am expected to include between four and six titles each month, I tend to concentrate on the books I have most enjoyed.  What follows is my “best of the best of 2025”—the books that I’d want on the list if I were a judge for The Clarke Award or World Fantasy or similar.  I urge you to seek them out for yourself!

 

Best SF/Speculative Fiction (six of my favorites, in no particular order): SF is a big tent; it can include  near future fiction concerned with vital issues we’re already facing, like climate change (E.J. Swift), or AI and inequality (Naylor and Liu), or really wild, mind-boggling speculation (Huang, Oyebanji, and especially qntm) – this was a very good year for SF.

All That We Are or Seem by Ken Liu

 

There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm

 

Where the Axe is Buried by Ray Naylor

 

Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang

 

When There Are Wolves Again by E.J. Swift

 

Esperance by Adam Oyebanji

 

Best Fantasy:  I tend to prefer speculative fiction to most genre fantasy; I avoid books marketed as “romantasy,”  and violent “grimdark” epic fantasies rarely appeal – but so much depends on the writing, the voice, and style.  If I am unconvinced by the blurb, or the first few pages, I will open a book at random and read a few paragraphs – that’s usually enough to either intrigue or dissuade me.  Anyway, these are the ones that kept me hooked to the end: one very dark fantasy with vampires; one perfect fairy tale; the second volume of an epic fantasy sequence; and a magical time-travel mystery  – all supremely well written.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Matar

The Strength of the Few by James Islington

 

The White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell

 

 

 

Best Horror:  This genre, long overlooked, although always with its fans, is booming as never before. It has sub-genres (ghost stories, weird tales, gothic horror) and often crosses into fantasy or crime or SF. These are the ones I can’t forget:

 

The Cat Bride by Charlotte Tierney

 

Animals by Geoff Ryman

 

Darker Days by Thomas Olde Heuveldt

 

One Yellow Eye by Leigh Radford

 

Exiles by Mason Coile 

 

King Sorrow by Joe Hill

 

Lisa Tuttle began writing professionally in the 1970s. Although she also writes novels and non-fiction, her preference is for the weird short story. Her most recent collection is Riding the Nightmare (Valancourt), a new collection of short stories. Her 2004 novella My Death, previously published by Aqueduct Press (number 21 in the Conversations Pieces list) has been reissued in the acclaimed NYRB Classics series. She lives in a forest on the west coast Scotland.