Wombling Along
Helloooo!
I hope the return to school, work, this universe has not been too much of a shock for the system and don’t forget if summer ends that just means Halloween is nearer!
Welcome to this week’s Wombling Along the weekly weekend supplement to the blog experiment. Here I share tempting reviews and articles that I came across in the week I thought I’d like to share. No one is online all the time so let’s try and beat the algorithms!
Reviews
First up the team at Skiffy and Fanty made this The Captive by Kit Burgoyne sound very interesting
https://skiffyandfanty.com/uncategorized/book-review-the-captive-kit-burgoyne/m
I love a review that actually makes me think perhaps I do actually want to read this and Didipandareads achieved this with this review of The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett (I eventually will I’m am sure)
https://dinipandareads.com/2025/09/04/book-review-the-tainted-cup-by-robert-jackson-bennett/
The excellent horror reviewers at Gingernuts of Horror both give us a chance to see what happened at Frightfest and an truly enticing anthology This Way Lies Madness
https://go.bsky.app/redirect?u=https%3A%2F%2Fgnofhorror.com%2Fcapital-punishment-frightfest-2025%2F
https://gnofhorror.com/this-way-lies-madness-a-review/
Jamedi at Jam Reads tempts with The Damned King Eidyn by Justin Lee Anderson and The Gryphon King by Sara Omer which I need to read
https://jamreads.com/reviews/the-damned-king-eidyn-3-by-justin-lee-anderson
https://jamreads.com/reviews/the-gryphon-king-the-chaos-constellation-1-by-sara-omer
Stewart Hotston gives a really enthusiastic review of Butter which makes me want to take a look at it more too
Gavreads continues their review of anthologies nominated for awards and a very positive reaction to I Want That Twink Obliterated edited by Berg, McCartney and Galey
Juliet K McKenna gave an great reaction to the Doctor Who Novella One Night Only by Tade Thompson (which I then read and really enjoyed)
https://www.julietemckenna.com/one-night-only-a-doctor-who-novella-from-tade-thompson/
Fantasy Book Nerd gave us a comics round up
https://www.fantasybooknerd.com/2025/09/book-post-comics-round-up-august.html?m=1
I like reviews that suddenly put a new book on my radar and these two good reviews from Nerds of A Feather and Ancillary Review of Books really make Audition For The Fox by Martin Cahill sounds REALLY interesting
https://ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2025/09/05/small-press-dispatch-once-upon-a-time-functionally/
http://www.nerds-feather.com/2025/09/book-review-audition-for-fox-by-martin.html?m=1
I love reviews where the reviewer finds the work speaking personally and this really comes across in this review of the Manga Before You Go Extinct from Nerds of A Feather
http://www.nerds-feather.com/2025/09/manga-review-before-you-go-extinct.html?m=1
And elsewhere on the web
Occasionally the ‘conversation’ both makes me think of Groundhog Day but also is a chance for us to reconfirm our opinions. The Unoffiical Hugo Book Club had this very interesting perspective
https://hugoclub.blogspot.com/2025/08/hot-take-abstraction-of-science-fiction.html?m=1
While I find myself very much aligned to the author Sam J Miller’s take. I was forever informed you need to read the classics to start SF and wondered why they didn’t work for me so much I’m a bit more clued up these days and this links well for me
https://undercover-in-the-apocalypse.ghost.io/this-is-why-we-dont-read-the-golden-age-anymore/
Following on way too late are the apologies of the Hugo Award Ceremony and I’m still unsure the right people learn the right lessons and the apologies are actually that good. Cora Buhlert has a very good take on this
https://corabuhlert.com/2025/09/03/better-late-than-never-the-2025-hugo-ceremony-apology/
Just simply codifying here are the best practise steps to run an event as a user manual checklist seem so hard for some people and I’m not buying that as they’re volunteers they can’t use common sense to save themselves embarrassment and actually respect our community.
Cora also shows that Dragoncon’s Dragon Awards underlined that despite small whining right wing fan boys SF&F fans don’t seem right wing at all!
https://corabuhlert.com/2025/09/01/some-comments-on-the-2025-dragon-award-winners/
I really enjoyed this Reactor article on 5 Spanish speculative fiction authors
the British Fantasy Society does a regular Member question and this list of scary summertime horror recommendations should help prepare us for the season to come
https://britishfantasysociety.org/when-the-dark-hits-the-daylight-fave-summer-set-dark-fiction/
I liked this Fantasy Hive Interview asking the authors what Dark Academai means to them
https://fantasy-hive.co.uk/2025/09/these-dreaming-spires-anthology-guest-post/
This essay in Nightmare Magazine exploring how weird fiction and horror do and do not intersect is worth a read
https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/the-h-word-the-profane-illumination-of-the-weird/
Charlie Jane Anders has a great mix of mini rants including on Doctor Who!
https://buttondown.com/charliejane/archive/its-another-basket-full-of-mini-rants/
In regular round ups always worth a look we have quite a few to share this week
Ansible is one of the oldest fanzines and the latest Edition is out
https://news.ansible.uk/a458.html
Gautam Bhatia has another excellent Words for Worlds that I highly recommend subscribing to
https://gautambhatia.substack.com/p/words-for-worlds-issue-103
Renay as always has the fantastic Intergalactic Mixtape to dive into
https://buttondown.com/intergalacticmixtape/archive/intergalactic-mixtape-18/
And Alasdair Stewart is back with The Full Lid which had added New York thoughts written beautifully
https://mailchi.mp/aecfff238cad/the-full-lid-5th-september-2025
And finally
Slight cheat as it came out earlier this year (but my blog my rules) but I’ve only just read Nicholas Whyte talking about Christopher Priest’s experience of not quite writing Doctor Who - a tale of so many egos!
https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/how-christopher-priest-wrote-for-doctor-who-and-what-happened-next/
That’s all for now. Have a great weekend!
