TOP PICKS – April 2026
It’s time for this month’s Top Picks!
That right, we’ve reached the end of another month, and now it’s time to share our Top Picks of the month!
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: Steel Gods by Richard Swan
So this month I revisited the Lord of the Rings trilogy by JRR Tolkien via audiobook. I completed The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers and I’m currently partway through Return of the King. This time around I’ve noticed even more changes that Peter Jackson makes in the films, and though I love those films, I will always say the books far surpass them, for example I will never forgive the films for ruining Frodo’s character!
Yet my Top Pick has to go to what is now one of my all-time favourite sequels, Steel Gods by Richard Swan. This is a fantastic Flintlock Fantasy horror with plenty of political intrigue, warfare and some terrifying supernatural entities. It was the ending of this book that completely captured me, it was thrilling in every sense. A huge underwater battle with mer-men, crustacean monsters, and some terrifying ancient beings. Honestly, what more could you want?!
Vinay: Sisters of the Lizard by Jackson Ford
Ah well, how does even compare to Nils choice – she has the ultimate cheat code of Lord of the Rings 🙂
SPFBO commitments meant I was a bit occupied in getting to my normal reads but every book I picked up this month was a banger. Andrew Givler’s Sleep Debt is the 5th installment of one of my favourite modern urban fantasies and is a book of severe consequences. Don’t Die Dave by AR Witham is a rip-roaringly outrageous LiTRPG in the vein of Dungeon Crawler Carl.
Cameron Johnston always adds his unique spin to known storylines and in First Mage on the Moon, he takes on the space race and the mission to moon but with mages and magic. It is intensely fun and hopeful and perfect when ‘Project Hail Mary’ is ruling the screens
My Top Pick for the month is Sisters of the Lizard by Jackson Ford, Book 2 of the Rakada. The Bone Raiders (Book 1 of the series ) was a fun, thrilling, fast-paced ride (Reviewed here). Sisters of the Lizard trades some of that chaos for fabulous character development and is in equal parts hilarious and heart-breaking. It is a journey book, literall and figuratively and gives equal attention to all the members of the Rakada. The character infused narrative makes us love, care, bleed and weep with these characters amidst some interesting world-building choices of nations and gods.
Vinay’s review | Pre-order here (Out 5th May)
Theo: Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My reading this month has been rather dominated by the SPFBO semi-finalists and I have managed to finish all six of them – with the help of a couple of four hour plane flights. I don’t want to pre-empt our full SPBO reviews that are coming out over the next couple of months by saying too much here – but all six of them showed the innovative approaches that the freedom of self-publishing can give authors.
However, I also managed to read my ARC of the prolific Adrian Tchaikovsky’s latest offering Green City Wars and it is an absolute delight. It takes my childhood memories of talking animal stories like Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nihm, or The Rebels of Journey’s End and elevates them with a fresh new tale of genetically uplifted animals serving as the unseen service industry workers in a future ‘sustainable’ Green Cities. At the same time – in the best tradition of Aesop’s fables – Tchaikovsky uses the animal perspective to deliver some piercingly sharp observations on human issues like late stage exploitative capitalism. So yeah – Green City Wars, is my pick of the month for April!
Pre-order here (Our 23rd June)
Cat: The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains by Reena McCarty
It’s been a busy month for me, so narrowing down my favourite has been tricky! And so it makes sense that The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains is my pick. I stormed through this in just a few days, and it was so much more than I anticipated: fun, engrossing and with genuine stakes that played with traditional ‘faerieland’ (and contemporary fae tropes) wonderfully. I’m definitely looking forward to the next part.
Emma: The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst
My favourite book this month is surprisingly non- smutty. I had picked up Sarah Beth Durst’s The Spellshop during an unhinged, unfettered book -buying spree and I’m incredibly glad I did. Wholesome and endearing with fantastic characters (dare I say the supporting cast were better than the main players) and just a lovely wee world to sink into. It’s got a wonderful folklorish feel without leaning too heavily into it and there’s a new bit of magic to discover around each corner. Cottagecore fantasy in spades.
Beth: Thistlemarsh by Moorea Corrigan
I’ve had quite a sedate reading month due to real-life commitments taking over somewhat. I read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir for bookclub and – it’s been sometime since I enjoyed a sci-fi novel, so this came as a surprise – it thoroughly hooked me and I absolutely fell in love with Rocky. It shouldn’t have surprised me, because The Martian similarly hooked me. It made for a fantastic discussion for book club too, the various questions of morality it raises, so if you’re in a book club I’d definitely recommend it!
The other book I finished this month was worlds apart but also fantastic – I don’t mind a slow reading month if all the books are strong ones! Moorea Corrigan’s Thistlemarsh was utterly enchanting and beguiling. Mouse inherits a faerie-blessed house with conditions; in order to be able to inherit it, she must fix all the house’s repairs within a month. The house will mean security for her shell-shocked brother currently convelescing in a hospital in France, and if she fails to repair it, the house will go to a man who made her family’s life miserable. But the repairs seem insurmountable… until she strikes an ill-advised bargain. This book is brimming with magic, tinged with darkness and sadness, but it ultimately hopeful in the way it brings these desperate people together. I don’t normally do compares, but it really put me in mind of The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by H. G. Parry and the Emily Wilde books by Heather Fawcett!
What was your favourite read of the month? Share with us in the comments!
