Episode 714: The Year in Books with James Bradley, Ian Mond, and Alex Pierce

For our year-end discussion of 2025 books, we’re joined by Locus reviewers Ian Mond and Alex Pierce, and distinguished critic and novelist James Bradley. As usual, we mention a lot of authors and titles, and probably forget to mention many deserving others. But you’ll no doubt find some suggestions you hadn’t thought of, and some of our usual digressions about familiar questions of genre, literary ambition, and books that at least some of us think have been overlooked. Alex's list Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shroud Claire North, Slow Gods Darkly Lem, Transmentation | Transgression EJ Swift, When There Are Wolves Again Alastair Reynolds, Halcyon Years Emily Tesh, The Incandescent The Isle in the Silver Sea, Tasha Surii Ian's list Mark Danielewski, Tom’s Crossing Alex Pheby, Waterblack Isaac Fellman, Notes from a Regicide Nnedi Okorafor, Death of the Author Nick Mamatas, Kalivas! James's list Claire North, Slow Gods EJ Swift, When There Are Wolves Again Laila Lalami, The Dream Hotel Nina Allan, A Granite Silence Sarah Hall, Helm Catherine Chidgey, The Book of Guilt. Gary's list Alix Harrow, The Everlasting Laila Lalami, The Dream Hotel Natalia Theodoridou, Sour Cherry R.F. Kuang, Katabasis Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Bewitching Jonathan's list Alix E. Harrow, The Everlasting EJ Swift, When There Are Wolves Again Emily Tesh, The Incandescent Nina Allan, A Granite Silence Silvia Park, Luminous After a very busy end of the year, that's the final episode for 2025. See you all in early 2026 with something new! And thank you to Alex, Ian, and James for making time to talk to us. We hope you enjoy the episode.