I’ve recently begun a new knitting project. Or, more accurately, I’m on my fourth time starting it because I kept messing up the first row of the lacework section. There are two reasons I haven’t given up on this pattern altogether: 1) I spent $40 on this book of knitting patterns, and I told myself I wouldn’t let that go to waste, and 2) I refuse to be defeated by some string. On my favorite Discord server, we commiserated about the tedium of re-working the same bit of knitting over and over again because you can’t get the stitches right. It’s frustrating to undo the work of hours but sometimes you just have to rip it all about, start over, and focus on doing work one row at a time and trust that eventually, it will start to come together. What I’ve Been Reading: Now is the winter of our advance copies– and the spring and part of the summer of them, too. So far, I have not been discontent with what I’ve received, but I made the mistake of requesting a lot of interesting-sounding books from NetGalley at the end of last year. Then I won another advance copy in a StoryGraph giveaway, and then I received another one directly from the publisher. All told, I have twenty-one advance copies left to read in the first half of 2026, and they all sound so good. Two of the advance copies I’ve been focusing on this week are The Faithful Dark by Cate Baumer (courtesy of NetGalley and Mobius Books) and The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan (courtesy of a StoryGraph giveaway). Both are debut fantasy novels, and both are based on historical events and systems, though The Faithful Dark is set in a secondary world, while The Red Winter is set in a fantastical France.
In The Faithful Dark, the city of Silgard is ruled by the Church, whose iron-fisted rules and rituals ensure the safety and salvation of the people who live there. When a series of murders stirs up fear among the population and a preacher with a divine heritage starts spouting heresies in the streets, the Church responds by sending Csilla, a naive orphan raised within the cathedral grounds, to kill the preacher to silence him. They choose Csilla because she has no soul, and so neither she nor the Church will be stained by the sin of murder. When she meets the preacher, however, Csilla finds him compelling and when he offers to help her gain a soul, she cannot refuse him. Meanwhile, Church inquisitor Ilan is desperate to gain back his place in the Church’s good graces, and will do anything to find the murderer and silence the preacher. As each member of the trio works to achieve their own ends, they find themselves digging deeper into secrets that could upend the foundations of their world. The Faithful Dark is an ambitious first novel. It takes on notions of faith and religion without lampooning them or turning its Church into a monolithic villain. While it is clear that some elements within it are corrupt, it still provides comfort and protection to its people, albeit through often harsh means. Csilla is a likable protagonist who grows and changes as she encounters the world outside the cathedral, and though Ilan is difficult to like at first, he softens as the story goes on and grows into a slightly more empathetic person without entirely changing who he is. There are some elements that hold the story back, however. The writing is clunky at times– especially in the first half, and for a story inspired by gothic movies and video games it often lacks atmosphere. Still, for a debut novel it’s a solid start and it will be interesting to see where things go in the next installment.
In The Red Winter we meet Sebastian Graves, an immortal monster hunter who has been summoned to return to Gevaudan in France, where twenty years earlier he and his indwelling demon Sarmodel hunted a great beast who stalked and slaughtered the people there in the winter of 1765. As he and his new companion travel back to Gevaudan, Sebastian tells him the true story of the Red Winter. As those two timelines progress, we are presented with another viewpoint that tells another story of Joan of Arc and her captain, the notorious Gilles de Rais. As the three timelines unwind, the full story of the Beast of Gevaudan slowly comes to light, as does Sebastian’s tale of love, loss, and the pitfalls of immortality. Though this is Australian author Cameron Sullivan’s first novel, it doesn’t read like a debut. It feels more like a story written by an experienced novelist with multiple books to his name. Interweaving three timelines is difficult enough but Sullivan manages it with ease, making each one interesting in its own right while providing context for the other two timelines. The historical settings feel true, the asides provide additional details without being dry or interrupting the story, the characters are richly drawn with believable motivations and reactions, the prose is excellent, and the story is unabashedly queer. I had such a great time with this book from beginning to end. I truly hope that Sullivan will write more stories about Sebastian and Sarmodel in the future, because The Red Winter had everything I could ask for from a historical horror/fantasy novel. What I’ve Been Listening To: It’s been about twenty years since I listened to the full album of Fallen. My twenty-something goth self loved it at the time, but after they overplayed ‘Bring Me to Life’ on the radio and everywhere else, I got tired of it. I decided to listen to it again out of pure nostalgia, and Fallen was just as wonderfully overwrought as I remember. I enjoyed listening to it once more, and it will probably be another twenty years before I listen to it again. Amy Lee seems to have two singing modes: soft or all-out, and both start to sound the same after a while. I do enjoy Evanescence, but only in small doses. The Cure, Songs of a Lost World (2024) I didn’t realize that The Cure had recently released a new album until I saw they won a Grammy a couple of weeks ago. So I pulled it up, listened to it all the way through twice, and had a great time with it. I’m not saying that Robert Smith and the others are vampires, but it really doesn’t sound like their voices have changed much since the 1980s. That’s not to say that Songs of a Lost World sounds just like Seventeen Seconds or Faith. It doesn’t. It sounds like the result of having decades more experience in life and the music industry. Fortunately, Smith and the band aren’t particularly bitter about their lost youth. They sound wistful and like they’re wondering where the time has gone, but they seem to have accepted the fact that the world has changed and they’ve gotten older. It makes for a beautiful album that I’ll be listening to again. By coincidence, I had recently checked out Lol Tolhurst’s book Goth: A History from the library. This book is a dual narrative that provides a history of the goth movement as well as being a memoir of Lol Tolhurst’s youth and journey into and through the world of music as a member of The Cure. I’d first read it in the summer of 2024, but I wanted to revisit it for Tolhurst’s recommendations of newer goth bands, one of which is Black Marble. I tried their debut album, 2012’s A Different Arrangement, and liked what I listened to (I haven’t had the chance to hear the whole thing). It replicates the synth sound from the 80s without it sounding either like it’s trying to be ironic about the sound or like it’s trying to replicate it exactly. This is a band I will be listening to more of in the future, and I’ll be looking into more of the darkwave musicians like Black Marble. What I’ve Been Watching: I saw the trailer for The Testament of Ann Lee before Hamnet, and was immediately intrigued. It had a confusing release schedule in January here in the US, and though I kept checking dates and places it didn’t look like it was going to be showing near me. Fortunately, I saw Elizabeth Briggs article, ‘Mother Ann Lee and the Shakers: The Faith That Danced’, and decided to check my local theaters to see if any of them would be showing The Testament of Ann Lee. Surprisingly, one had it. I was lucky, too, because the film was about to leave the theater and I was able to get a ticket for the final showing last Wednesday night. Though the film puts Ann’s early life– spent in terrible poverty– in a golden light (sometimes literally) it doesn’t shy away from the harder aspects of the rest of her life, such as the deaths of all four of her children or the persecution she and her followers faced due to their beliefs and practices. Amanda Seyfried gave an outstanding performance throughout and though I thought some of the script was a little stilted, I loved the rest of it. I’m a visual person, so films with great cinematography always resonate with me. The Testament of Ann Lee is beautifully shot– especially the dance sequences which are full of life and color. If you enjoy historical dramas, this is an excellent one to try, even if you’ve never been interested in the Shaker movement that Ann Lee helped found.
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Sunday, 15 February 2026
Recently Read #3
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The Sunday Slowdown Edit
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