TOP PICKS – January 2026
A new year, and a Top Picks of the month!
That’s right, January is finally over, and so we can share our first Top Pick for 2026!
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: The Blackfire Blade by James Logan
So 2026 started off quite mixed for me as I had three DNFs. The first one was just too grim for my personal tastes, the second had a main character I couldn’t stand and the third felt disjointed, poorly executed and just didn’t hold my interest at all.
However, I have had some fantastic reads too! The Ornathologist’s Field Guide to Love by India Holton was another fun historical fantasy full of humour, chaotic shenanigans, magical birds and a rivals to lovers romance. I buddy read Books and Bewitchment by Isla Jewell with Beth and we both quickly and surprisingly became hooked on this one. Our main character Rhea is given the opportunity to make a new life for herself and discover her dreams, along the way there’s unexpected magic and romance. It was cosy and uplifting to read.
I then read a Japanese translated novella, The Luminous Fairies and Mothra by three authors, Shin’ichiro Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga and Yoshie Hotta and translated by Jeffrey Angles. I was looking forward to learning about Mothra’s origin story but actually I got more than just Kaiju lore and mythology as this story also reflected on political and environmental issues that were circulating in post war Japan. A fascinating read. I’m currently reading Isles of the Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson which is a standalone Cosmere novel that expands upon the Sixth of the Dusk short story. Characters with Aviar bird companions with powers, an island on the brink of war with aliens, a human/dragon race. I’m having such a good time with this one.
My Top Pick goes to The Blackfire Blade by James Logan which is the sequel to The Silverblood Promise. I ended up loving this book even more than the first as I loved how the characters grow, become a found family and the quests they go on were just so entertaining. This time around Lukan, Ashra and Flea are placed in a cold and mysterious city with so many secrets to uncover, strange creatures and even stranger monsters to encounter. Logan gives readers a damn good time.
Beth: Books and Bewitchment by Isla Jewell
I’ve had a pretty packed start to my 2026 reading! I DNF’d the same book as Nils for the same reason, it was a multi-POV which just flickered too quickly between the characters, resulting in a disjointed feeling which just didn’t hook me. I also had a book which I didn’t quite DNF but I skimmed very lightly through just to see what happened, but the levels of angst and melodrama were too high for my tastes.
Despite those two, I read two Japanese translations that I thoroughly enjoyed, The Full Moon Coffee Shop and The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop. Both were of that genre of Japanese novel that feature characters discovering something healing at difficult points in their lives, similar to Before the Coffee Gets Cold and We’ll Prescribe you a Cat. The Vanishing Cherry had a beautiful analogy for these kinds of books, comparing them to classical music in which the same key melody is repeated by different instruments.
I also finally read The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden for book club and after a bumpy start I fell in love with it and bought the next two books. I’ve struggled in the past with books based on Eastern European mythology, so it was nice to finally found one I enjoyed. Sticking with the theme of mythology, I also read The Scorpion and the Night Blossom by Amelie Wen Zhao which, like much of her writing, is inspired by Chinese mythology. I loved this one, I got so swept up in the story and the romance – my review will be coming soon but I just had to pick up the sequel The Dragon and the Sun Lotus immediately!
Despite how much I enjoyed Scorpion, my top pick of the month goes to Books and Bewitchment, my buddy read with Nils which she’s already mentioned above. I had to give this one my top pick, as it just surprised me so much! I wasn’t expecting much from it, thinking it would just be a fluffy cosy romance, and certainly it is that, but it hooked me so much I couldn’t put it down and ended up racing ahead of Nils! Even now, I’m finding I miss it and I wish there was more of the series to go back to!
Buddy read review | Pre-order: available 3rd Feb
Theo: Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My year has opened with just three spec-fic books this month. As well as a couple of stonkingly good ARCs I finally got round to a book that’s been out for a while. I enjoyed Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary with its first contact themes, communication difficulties and the underlying respect for science. Tbh I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as The Martian but it was still a fun read with the interplay of human Grace and alien Rocky.
Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Strife is a great fourth book in his Children of… series with a cleverly braided trio of timelines and some glorious characters – both to love and to hate. Mark Lawrence’s Daughter of Crows kicks off his latest trilogy with a refreshingly different protagonist, an aged female assassin whose past is catching up with her at a pace that the frailties of her body prevent her from escaping. The backstory of a murderously different kind of schooling, and a very dark house of horrors make this a darker story even than Lawrence’s usual peril-packed tales.
However, my pick of the month has to go to Children of Strife for the brilliantly inventive characters of Cato the spacefaring warrior mantis shrimp and Mira the fragile consciousness riding atop an unstable parasitic entity.
Hil: Death on the Caldera by Emily Paxman
I’ve started the year by raiding the recommendations from the Hive last month. I’m currently enjoying City of Others by Jared Poon. It’s hitting the same buttons as Liz Williams’ Inspector Chen series, looking at a civil servant who keeps the peace for the local supernatural population. There’s a ghost cat as well, who delights in tormenting the office staff. What’s not to love?
My book of the month is Death on the Caldera, by Emily Paxman, which satisfied my Agatha Christie cravings in a fantasy setting: death, witches and useless aristocrats. It was suitably twisty and kept my attention to the very last word. A good start to the year.
Cat: Cabaret in Flames by Hache Pueyo.
It’s been a rather unusual start to the year for me, as I’m also involved with the SPFBO shortlist – so a heap of varied indie titles took up my first weeks! As with everyone else, I’ve had a couple of DNFs (hey, no reader vibes with every book), but what has risen to the top of the pile has therefore seemed so very good.
City of Others by Jared Poon is great fun, and The Brides by Charlotte Cross is an exceptional Dracula retelling (there’s so much good gothic this year!).
But my winner is Cabaret in Flames by Hache Pueyo. A mystery in an alternate Brazil with strange magic and a dash of cyberpunk, beautifully written, with flawed and memorable characters (including an incredible take on disability representation). I raced through it in a couple of days and the atmosphere still haunts me. Gorgeously unusual.
Jonathan: Persona by Aoife Josie Clements
A good start to the year for me. Obviously first place has to go to Aoife Josie Clements’ Persona, a staggering work of transgressive body horror and corporate weird that immediately smashed into my favourites list.
But this month I’ve also read Rhett Davis’ masterful eco body horror Arborescence, which is a wonderful work of speculative fiction that I wouldn’t be surprised to see on next year’s Clarke shortlist.
And for my PhD I’ve been revisiting some old faves, Karel Çapek’s R.U.R., the play where we get the term “robot” from which still feels remarkably prescient in its exploration of automation and techno feudalism, and his War With the Newts, which was written in the 1930s during the rise of Nazi Germany and still has frighteningly relevant things to say about the spread of fascism.
Jonathan’s review | Available now
Vinay: City of Others by Jared Poon
January is off to a busy start and a whole ton of ARCs to get through. Like a few others, I am also part of the SPFBO – so that also took up some of my reading time. Nonetheless January has been off to an eventful start.
It’s always a pleasure to be back in the world of Dresden and Twelve Months was a fantastic book to start the year off with. While it hews away from the standard Dresden template and is sombre and reflective, it is still a fantastically paced book that I finished overnight (as one gets increasingly time-starved, finishing a book in a day is a significant mark of love and respect for the series). Outlaw is a novella in the Dresden files universe that hits the right notes for what we expect from a Dresden Files novel (but too short).
Chronos Warlock by Shami Stovall is an incredibly fun novel that plays with time a fair bit – that makes proceedings a fun cheat with the real magic being how to deal with the complications arising from time-enforced actions. Detour by Jeff Rake and Rob Hart is a fantastic SF thriller but ends on a cliff-hanger. Godstorm by Solitaire Townsend, an alt-history book of a petro-fuelled Roman Empire that thrives in the middle ages is a book brimming with fantastic ideas including climate change.
My Top Pick goes to a book mentioned by a couple of people above – City of Others by Jared Poon. It combines a Singapore based setting focused on a government agency with the supernatural. There is a distinctly unique Singaporean flavor that runs through the book. Coupled with likeable leads, deep themes, solid pacing and some sharp commentary on office politics and bureaucracy, City of Others was a joy to read.
Kat: Bog Queen by Anna North.
My best book of January was Nine Goblins by T Kingfisher, but i’m currently putting the polishing touches on a review for it so to avoid repeating myself, my top pick for January will be the runner up for this month: Bog Queen by Anna North.
This story follows a young druid queen just before the Romans invaded Britain and the modern day anthropologist who is tasked with identfying her when her body is discovered in a bog. The strengths of this book come from scientific detail and breathless pacing, as well the unusual autism representation. Definitely a recommendation for those who love a touch of the historical or archaeological in their reading!
What was your favourite read of the month? Share with us in the comments!
