In Short: September

It’s been a rough month, my friends. Putting it under a spoiler tag because it’s definitely a downer. Trigger warning for mentions of cancer, dementia, implied parental abuse, and doggie health scares (the dog is fine!) If you do read under the spoiler, I am okay and don’t want to talk about any of it. I already know you’re all lovely enough to wish me well <3

[View post to see spoiler]

This all made it much harder to read than usual, but at least what I did read was great!

ARCs Received

The Flowers I Deserve is the newest novel from Tamara Jerée, whose debut The Fall That Saved Us I adored. Poison-girls being Extremely Queer – yes please!

Boy, With Accidental Dinosaur caught my eye with that fabulous cover, but I initially wasn’t going to request an arc – just pick it up when it was released. But then I saw it was in the lgbt+ category on Netgalley! So yes, I pounced MOST GLEEFULLY.

And I’m desperately hoping that Gollancz, who’s publishing it in the UK, hasn’t done the editing (because they’re fucking abominable at it) but there was no way I could resist The Wolf and His King!

The Gods Must Burn features a bi man becoming a god after he sacrifices himself to save some wolf cubs – can you say hells fucking yes??? Plus it’s from Rebellion, and while I don’t always love their books, they do consistently publish outside-the-box stuff that’s usually worth taking a peek at!

Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die is one I’ve been hearing great things about, and I’m hoping it’ll end up one of next year’s Unmissables. Same with City of Others!

Whereas We Dance Upon Demons wasn’t on my radar at all – I had no idea Vaishnavi Patel had a new book in the works! – but using magic to defend an abortion centre against pro-forced-birthers??? That sounds so cool!

Artifact Space is the US edition of one of my favourite books, and I’m intensely curious about whether any editing’s been done (the UK edition was by Gollancz, and is chock-full of everything from typos to continuity errors).

Read

18 books read this month! A fair bit less than last month’s 25 reads, but considering what a mess this month was I’m actually very positively surprised.

Nine-Tenths was a wonderful love story that refused to be just one thing; extremely outside the box in all the ways! The Summer War delighted me too – despite the premise it gave me so much joy! But the unquestionable stand-out this month was Eight Doors From Dawn to Midnight, Rachel Neumeier’s newest fantasy. GOING STRAIGHT ON THE FOREVER-FAVOURITES LIST, HOLY WOW. Extravagantly beautiful and strange and thinky with fantastic characters and super-unique worldbuilding and magic! Literally flawless.

I reread the rest of the Rivers of London series this month – well, the novels, anyway – which were really great when I was grey-brained. Alas, I didn’t really love the newest instalment, Stone & Sky – adored Abigail’s plotline, but a lot of the rest of it made me twitch.

DNF-ed

18 DNFs in September – which is a new record, damn it. GAH. (An equal number of books read and books DNFed – does that mean anything?) Quite a few of these were great but just not for me – Herculine, Lost Reliquary, and Philosophy of Thieves in particular – and Overgrowth especially I want to try again later.

Reviewed

Honestly, given everything going on, I’m amazed I managed two reviews. And they weren’t terrible, either!

Next Up

The sequel to Witch King is out in a WEEK and I haven’t started my reread yet; and I was about to reread the UK edition of Artifact Space before I was approved for the arc of the US edition, so that feels wonderfully appropriate! Reigncloud Palace is a cosy fantasy about someone who repairs magical items and has been on my tbr for ages; Captive just came out today, and I’m SO EXCITED to finally be able to pounce on it! In Solitude’s Shadow is one I spotted on bluesky, and the author was kind enough to send me a copy (it was free on the Big River site, but I can’t buy through them any more because of this bs). It’s supposed to be queer Epic Fantasy and I’m really hoping it delights me!

ARCs Outstanding

I was hoping and planning to get through a chunk of these this month, but it was not to be!

Unmissable SFF Updates

The Unmissable list for next year got some covers added, and now has 24 books! And after realising I’d somehow managed to include one book twice, this year’s list is 81 books long!

How did my predictions/anticipated reads for September go? I declared five books Unmissable for this month, and–

two were five-star reads (Audition For the Fox and Summer War)one was a two-star read (A Blood as Bright as the Moon)one was a DNF (Sunward)one I haven’t finished yet (Angel Maker)

Honestly Audition and Summer War were both so freaking awesome that they easily make up for the others.

Misc

This month my interview with Martin Cahill, author of Audition For the Fox, went live! He was such an incredible person to talk to, I had so much fun.

I’m genuinely not sure whether or not I can mark Neveryóna by Samuel R Delany as read or not – I got so fucking frustrated with it I skimmed a lot, so do I count it as a DNF or read?

The copy-editing for tRaum Books was wrapped up early this month, so was complete before everything came off the rails. Thank the gods. I’m really proud of the work I did, and collaborating with the editor there was a JOY. If I thought there was any chance I could make a sane amount of money doing it, I’d set up as a self-employed copy-editor in a heartbeat!

Looking Forward

October is EASILY the most exciting book-release month this year! New books from Nghi Vo, Alix E Harrow, Martha Wells, Freya Marske, Tamara Jerée, AND Hiron Ennes! A sequel to Bored Gay Werewolf! THE NEXT ARCANA IMPERII BOOK! If you don’t hear from me until November, THESE’LL BE WHY!

May we all have a most optimal October!

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