Book recommendations from Philcon

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 22:26:19 GMT

Notes from the Best SF Books of 2025 panel at Philcon.

A Tangle of Time (sequel to the Hexologists)

Wearing the Lion (Wiswell, story about Hercules)

Aftertaste (LaVelle) ghosts and cooking

The Splinter Effect (I think it's the one where time travel makes it possible to go into the past, but not carry things forward-- if you want to protect an artifact, you have to hide it somewhere in its time and find it again in your time)

The Will of the Many (elite academy gets a student who won't get sucked into the hierarchy)

The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association-- complications when a werewolf daughter goes to a dangerous magic school

The Stardust Grail (finding a major alien artifact)

Inventing the Renaissance (non-fiction by Ada Palmer-- the premise is that the Renaissance wasn't really a thing. From things she said, the glorious eras when the rich commission wonderful things aren't great times to live-- if the rich are competing that hard, power is shaky and the fighting affects the non-rich)

What We Can Know (tracking down a poem after worldwide catastrophe)

Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil (woman with limited life gets into magic)

The Mars House (people on Mars are dealing with hazardously strong people from earth, how can they live together? I'll note that I could write the premise of this from memory, unlike many of the others where I used amazon)

Those Beyond the Walls (dystopia, murder mystery)

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Book recommendations from Philcon