TOP PICKS – February 2025
Welcome to a whole new year of Top Picks!
Every month, we like to share with you our favourite reads of the month. We’ve rounded up our contributors and asked them each to recommend just one favourite read of the month.
A big thank you to Nils for coming up with this feature, and our contributors for taking part!
Let’s find out what the team has read this month…
Nils: Grave Empire by Richard Swan
I had a fantastic reading month as I read four of my favourite authors. The Devils by Joe Abercrombie was such a fun buddy read with Beth as the book was just a hilarious ride with some very compelling characters! We also buddy read a short story by Alix E Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird, which hit me quite hard with its emotional beauty. Towards the end of the month I read the fifth book in the Bone Season series, The Dark Mirror by Samantha Shannon and wow! This one had such a cinematic ending.
However my Top Pick goes to Grave Empire by Richard Swan which was just the perfect blend of supernatural horror, fascinating fantasy creatures and mystery upon mystery which had me hooked right up to the end. So, so good!
Cat: Black Rose by Arlo Z Graves
I had to pick a fabulous indie this month – Black Rose by Arlo Z Graves. Supernatural Western? Always fun.
Then add an unexplained rise in sentient machines, a centipede train, a sharp-shooting duster-wearing protagonist with his brace of gun-deputies and a ton of religious and racial allegory that seems so very topical right now… an absolute ride and I loved it!
Kat: To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose.
My standout read for February has to be To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose.
To Shape a Dragon’s Breath follows Anequs as she finds a dragon egg and is forced into the society that see her and her people as uncivilised savages in order to learn how to control her dragon’s breath. This is a stark reflection of the ignorant, xenophobic, and racist treatment that native peoples experience and have experienced at the hands of colonisers. Anequs has an unusual, flat character arc throughout the book as she knows who she is, she will stand up for what she believes in, and she refuses to be bullied by the society she is forced to exist in. It’s the society around her that needs to adapt and change around her, rather than Anequs changing who she is.
This is a brilliant book with fantastic autism representation and a magic system built into the native culture of Anequs’s people.
Gray: Bored Gay Werewolf by Tony Santorella
I’ve finally read something that is new and relevant! I can contribute to the conversation! Bored Gay Werewolf by Tony Santorella. It hits the perfect intersection of depressing, funny and uplifting.
The “bored gay werewolf” of the title is probably better described as being crushingly depressed by his job, the ruins of the economy and his empty vacuum of a romantic life, but all of that changes when he gets sucked into a tech-bro’s hyper macho pyramid scheme that promises to grant him some control over his bestial half.
It’s more character study than page turner, but you end up enjoying spending time with the characters so much that it is no surprise everyone is clamouring for more, even if the ending is a little twee and tidy for my tastes.
Theo: The Book That Held Her Heart by Mark Lawrence
It’s been a bit of a quiet month with just two speculative fiction reads, but both fascinating and thought provoking books. I started the month with TJ Klune’s The Bones Beneath My Skin which is a lovely combination of preternaturally gifted child with a snarky sense of humour and ‘a my two dads’ enemies to lovers romance, all against a backdrop of sinister threat from unknown malign forces.
I finished it with Mark Lawrence’s final book in the Library Trilogy – The Book That Held Her Heart which was a glorious mix of sublime prose, compelling characters and twisting plots. However, the allegory of the library as some kind of fantasy version of the world wide web give Lawrence the chance to explore some themes with a very contemporary resonance, about information, misinformation, and the abuse of communication. While the library trilogy asks if an infinite library is too valuable to destroy or too dangerous to preserve, a similar question can be asked about our own internet.
King Oanold makes a good cypher for another would-be monarch and ensures that The Book that Held her Heart can be enjoyed (and analysed) on many different levels – so that is my pick of the month.
Hil: The Crimson Road by A. G. Slatter
The Real World (™) has taken a lot of my attention this month, and although I’ve managed to get a hard copy of Lightfall by Ed Crocker, I’ve not managed to read any of it. Next month, maybe?
I did manage to devour The Crimson Road by A. G. Slatter though! It’s Buffy meets The Name of The Rose, with added mer-queens, librarians, dancing antler-headed women and found family. So, if you like your “I’m not the chosen one” tales, mixed with women who will Not Be Told, this one’s for you!
Vinay: The Diplomacy of the Knife by CM Caplan
Wow Feb was quite the month I say – I was lucky to read a set of books all of whom were amazing bangers, all of which could potentially be a top pick.
Richard Swan’s Grave Empire is a fabulous start to a new series in this existing world and is marked by some terrific writing on horror.
Theo’s recommendation on Triggernometry from last month got me on that train and it was amazing – Fahrenheit 451 but for maths in a Wild Wild West.
I was fortunate to pick up CM Caplan’s Four Of Mercies series – Book 1 was the amazingly titled The Fall is All There Is and you are immediately hit with one of most unique narrator voices in the recent past and an entirely fusterclucked family. Book 2 of the series – The Diplomacy of the Knife dials the situation even further – in what I called a fusterclucked family meets fusterclucked war of succession in a twice fusterclucked world (twin annhiliations) and is my TOP PICK of the month. My review of this should be up on the Hive shortly but if anyone wants to read about this Top Pick of mine, they can read it here
Beth: The Devils by Joe Abercrombie
I’ve had a super slow reading month as, like H, Real Life has shouldered everything aside. Both my children have their birthdays in February so now I have a ten year old and Official teenager – big birthdays deserved a lot of celebrating!
With that in mind, I only managed to finish three books this month; The Devils by Joe Abercrombie was a hotly anticipated read and didn’t let me down. Nils and I buddy read this and finished it early in the month, and I absolutely loved this next step from a favourite author. It’s a direction I’m most definitely here for; it had me laughing, crying, and Nils and I had so many hypotheses about the plot – it has to be my Top Pick.
As she mentioned above, we also read Alix E. Harrow’s beautiful short story The Knight and the Butcherbird, more to come on this from us soon! And I read The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton for bookclub – it’s the true story of his thirty years on Alabama’s death row, convicted for crimes he didn’t commit, and his fight for freedom. I was dreading reading it, thinking it was going to be very upsetting and rage-inducing; and whereas it absolutely is those things, it was also incredibly moving, hopeful, had such important messages about humanity, and necessary. I’m so very glad I read it and I’d urge everyone else to.
Finally I’ve also been reading and not quite finished yet Servant Of Rage by Alex Knight. The fact I haven’t finished it yet is the only reason I’m not choosing it for my Top Pick! Knight has reworked his original self-published epic fantasy, coming back to it with experience and an incredible publishing team behind him from Portal. I can’t wait for you all to rediscover this world!
Nils and Beth’s buddy read review | Pre-order here
What was your favourite read of the month? Share with us in the comments!
