I am about half way through Look to Windward by Iain Banks.

I find this one of the most depressing books in the Culture series as it deals with loss, grief to the point of suicide, the trauma of war lasting way beyond the war, intervention by a super power, and a rigid caste system. Its obviously heavily influenced by the Gulf War. Most of what it has to say is unlikely to be new on these topics to most readers but it does say it without being too heavy handed, most of the time.

The dirigible behemoth creatures are a delight.

I finished up VE Schwab 's A Darker Shade of Magic series reread and have been reading the first sequel book The Fragile Threads of Power. I’m almost halfway through it now and it’s pretty enjoyable. Definitely slower paced than her first series but seems like it’s setting up a more complex story

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

Neither of these are technically books but they both tell a story.

Worm by wildbow is a finished web serial that follows a troubled teenage girl who can control bugs and how she becomes disillusioned with society. There’s so much more to it but I genuinely cannot describe the plot without spoilers in less than a few pages. It isn’t perfect but despite it’s extreme length (about 1.7mil words or about 4 ITs by Stephen King) this is my second time reading it and I still love it. Also super powers are semi-normal in this society but they are explicitly gained through incredibly traumatic “trigger events” and usually the people who get them are in situations where even suicide isn’t a viable escape option. Shit gets dark fast and many of the villains in the series are genuinely terrifying.

I’m also listening to an audio drama called the Magnus archives. You may have heard of Chekhov’s gun before; this is Chekhov’s firing squad. It follows the archivist, Johnathan Sims, and his readings of paranormal stories submitted to the archive by the public. He slowly starts to notice trends in the stories and connects them together bit by bit, completely changing his understanding of the world around him and himself. If you like horror and you like mystery this will be hard to put down. It feels as though the authors truly understand the base nature of fear.