We are in that week between Christmas and New Years, when the presents are unwrapped and work is on pause. One year is dying and the next is struggling to be born, and I here I am in my comfy home office reflecting on the media I consumed last year.
I read some books. A few them were great, most of them were good, and there were a few that I didn’t finish. It was a similar story with video games. I didn’t watch much television or many movies, but that’s nothing new.
Here are a few of the things I loved this year:
The Tainted Cup (2024) and A Drop of Corruption (2025), by Robert Jackson Bennett. They’re very much fantasy novels, but set in a world where the “magic” is alien biology with a roughly steampunk level of technology. Add a detective plus assistant dynamic with two very distinctive, very entertaining characters who are trying to make the world a better place by solving crimes in their corner of the realm, and you have a beguiling mix that has won a pile of genre awards this year. If you like the fantasy genre or the mystery genre (and especially if you like them both), give these a try.
Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City (2019) by KJ Parker. I love a good military science fiction or military fantasy novel with some character and some competence porn. This had plenty of both and plenty of twists and turns.
With the Old Breed (1981) by EB Sledge. This is a memoir about the invasions of Peleliu and Okinawa. It’s compelling and brutal in equal measure. Maybe “love” is not the right verb to describe this book, but I think it should be required reading for anyone thinking about going into politics or the military. Or, frankly, anyone who holds a romantic view of the US military.
Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything (2015, updated in 2025) by Tim Marshall. I’ve long loved maps and the history that has shaped them. My pub map of Richmond-upon-Thames is merely a recent example. Ask me about the National Geography Bee and Cozumel sometime if you want the deep lore. Prisoners of Geography walks the reader through the geographic realities that have shaped humanity for as long as we’ve been sharpening sticks and pointing them at each other. I thought it fascinating to see how the same issues that plagued Peter the Great in the 1680s are still causing chaos in Kyiv today.
Switching gears a bit, my favorite game of 2025 was The Planet Crafter. It’s a quiet, chill game about terraforming an alien planet. I like to think of it as something like Subnautica without the terror. Or the boardgame Terraforming Mars if it were transitioned right into a video game. You start on a desolate planet and build your way to paradise via a bunch of interweaving systems that include increasing oxygen, atmospheric pressure, heat, plants, insects, and animals. With the game’s expansions, there are currently three planets and two moons to terraform, and each of them have their own story to uncover, though it’s really a game more about building snazzy bases and watching the world change around you than it is the story itself. And once you terraform the first planet, you can take your knowledge (and stuff) with you to accelerate the others.
I also played and thoroughly enjoyed Hades II. My favorite game a few years ago was the first Hades, and Hades II is a perfect example of a sequel being “the same thing only different.” It scratches the same itches as the original, but it adds a few new systems and tells a different story from a different character’s perspective. Both games put the player into the middle of a tale about the Greek pantheon and provide a mix of fun, action gameplay and cleverly constructed storytelling.
I’m sure I’m forgetting things, but via the power of the edit button, I can add them later.