Author name: trishmatson

Educated as a physicist yet living as a journalist, Trish Matson is an award-winning writer and editor whose ever-expanding list of interests includes a lifelong love of SF/F, plus wordplay, libraries, games, music, dancing, audio drama, and podcasting. She’s listed as TrishEM on various fora, but you can find her most easily on Twitter.

Cover of Precious Children, by Mary G. Thompson, featuring doll-heads of cherubic blond-haired, blue-eyed boys, with the middle one glowing slightly, against a black background.
Blog Posts

Book Review: Precious Children, by Mary G. Thompson

/

I was really impressed by Mary G. Thompson’s dystopic science fiction novel last year, One Level Down. Her new SF novel, Precious Children, shows that she is full of interesting ideas and can explore and execute them really well. I look forward to seeing more from her in the future! From the publisher’s description: A wealthy family trying to cheat death is overmatched—by a stubborn teenager hiding in a body that looks like their son. In this taut tale of genetics and entitlement, nature vs. nurture goes horrifyingly wrong.

Cover of The Night Pool, by Lauren Lee Smith, featuring a female silhouette with long hair in a long dress, with liquid streaming from her clawlike fingers, on the wooded shore of a pond at night, with an owl flying behind her.
Blog Posts

Book Review: The Night Pool, by Lauren Lee Smith

/

The Night Pool is a book that’s full of brutality and horror, with the supernatural elements basically secondary to the tragedies and traumas mostly inflicted by white men during the Gold Rush in Conoma, California. Bringing light through this darkness are the female characters who reach out across ethno-cultural divides to support each other in sisterhood. In the end, there is comfort and strength to be found in this novel, despite the sad and terrible things that happen and that are done.

Cover of A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett, featuring a mushroom at the top, an anatomical cutaway drawing of a human head below, and various fungi growing from the sides, with silhouettes of Ana and Din at top left and right, a hanged man at the bottom right, and a woman in a wheelchari and the bottom left.
Blog Posts

Book Review: A Trade of Blood, by Robert Jackson Bennett

/

I’m very happy with Robert Jackson Bennett’s A Trade of Blood: An Ana and Din Mystery (Shadow of the Leviathan: Book 3). I’ve had some complaints lately about late-series books that are merely “the further adventures of” their protagonists without advancing their characters or advancing their worldbuilding to any significant degree, but that’s not the situation here. I mean, yes, it’s another episodic book, with Ana and Din solving another murder mystery; however, Bennett also reveals more about how their alchemical-steampunky Empire works (specifically agriculture and animal husbandry, but it’s more interesting and disturbing than expected), and explores more of Din’s alienated family history (more complicated than even he had known)! Additionally, Din himself is undergoing some changes. Also, the case itself is quite intriguing, in some horrifying ways. This is a thoroughly satisfying sequel, which picks up a few plot and character threads from previous books and continues to weave an ever-richer tapestry.

Cover of The River Has Roots, by Amal El-Mohtar, featuring colorful flowers springing from a very winding green-and-brown stylized river.
Blog Posts

Reviews: Hugo finalists for Best Novella

/

I have previously reviewed three of the Best Novella finalists for the 2026 Hugo Awards: What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher; Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite; and The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar. The other finalists are Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz, Cinder House by Freya Marske, and The Summer War by Naomi Novik. This is a really strong list of contenders, and I’m still undecided how to vote for my second, third, and fourth choices for Best Novella, because they’re all great in different ways. Although I do have a favorite, I wouldn’t be unhappy with any of them winning. Also, these are my own thoughts and do not indicate a Skiffy and Fanty endorsement. (Spoiler warnings: My summaries below reveal that all the novellas have happy-ish endings.)

Skiffy and Fanty logo
Blog Posts

Reviews: Shorter fiction Hugo Award finalists

/

In a previous review here, Stephen Geigen-Miller discussed all the finalists for the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story or Comic. Paul Weimer and I, between us, had reviewed all six Best Novel finalists before they were announced, and I posted links to all those reviews here. I have now finished all the finalists for Best Novella, Best Novelette, and Best Short Story, and I’m going to share some thoughts here. However, these are my own thoughts and not any endorsement of Skiffy and Fanty as a whole. For any readers who are still undecided about any of these categories, maybe my perceptions will help.

Poster image for Star City; in gray, red, and black, a dark-haired woman in a trench coat carrying a briefcase walks up stone steps in the foreground; behind her, a rocket takes off into space; in the background, in shades of red, yellow, and gray, the Chief Designer listens on headphones.
Blog Posts

Review: Star City series (S1)

/

The three episodes of For All Mankind that I watched last summer during Apple TV’s free weekend were great, but I never found time to dive into the four (now five) seasons of that acclaimed alt-history science fiction series (based on the idea that the USSR got to the moon before the US). However, when the spinoff series Star City started this May, and some people whose judgment I trust said you didn’t have to have watch FAM to understand this show, I gave it a try. It turns out they were right, that was a great decision, and this is a great show! It definitely helps if you’ve read or watched some Cold War spy fiction previously, but I think I’d have been fine even if I hadn’t watched S1 E1-3 of FAM. I absolutely love the character developments and the plot convolutions in this 8-episode show, even if a few circumstances seemed slightly unlikely/sentimental. It’s unknown so far whether there will be a second season, but I can see it ending as is, without feeling dissatisfied, even though several people’s fates are left hanging. However, I do hope for at least one more season.

Scroll to Top