This was a rough month – a bunch of different body parts decided to freak out simultaneously, and I spent most of April in a lot of pain. But at least there were books!

ARCs Received

Five VERY EXCITING arcs this month! I dove straight into Saints of Storm and Sorrow, and am already head-over-heels in love with it – and it should go without saying that I can’t wait to get to the rest of these, either. I’m really hoping that Blood of the Old Kings can break the terrible track record I’ve had with books in translation… (The first few pages were very promising!)

And then on the VERY LAST DAY OF THE MONTH, a copy of Metal From Heaven was bestowed upon me!!! Folx, I actually had tears in my eyes, I was (AND AM) that happy!!!!!

Read

Fewer books read this month than last – I still don’t consider myself back to normal yet. But MY GODS, did I read some excellent books!!!

Letters to the Luminous Deep charmed me utterly, as did The Gathering and Notes From the Burning Age – despite the latter two being much darker/bleaker. The Bone Harp is an exquisitely beautiful, soft story of healing, the backstory inspired a tiny bit by the Silmarillion, and it’s been a little while since Frances Hardinge and I hit it off, but Unraveller might be my new favourite of her works. It’s just PERFECT!

And I don’t know where to even START with The Failures – I understand why DAW said they’d never seen anything like it before! Neither have I, which is making reviewing it…interesting!

My last read of the month, Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments, was one of my favourites; I inhaled it in less than 24 hours. How has it taken me so long to get back to this series?!

To the best of my knowledge, 25% of this month’s books had BIPOC authors. Much better than March!

Reviewed

Very pleased with how much I got written this month! There are always more books to review than I have time to write about (or that my hands can handle typing up) but eight is VERY respectable! And that’s without counting my DNF reviews…

DNF-ed

I was so looking forward to both of these, but alas, they both proved disappointments. So it goes!

ARCs Outstanding

I have so much reading to do in May, to make sure I’m not scrambling in June! But good luck getting me to admit I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. *rubs hands together in glee*

Unmissable SFF Updates

My Unmissable SFF of 2024 list continues to be updated with newly revealed covers, and even one or two new books! This brings us to a total of 95 Unmissable books!

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

• three were five star reads (Someone You Can Build a Nest In, A Sweet Sting of Salt, and A Letter to the Luminous Deep)
• one was a four and a half stars read (Sheine Lende)
• one was a three and a half star read (Merciless Saviors)
• one I have no idea what to do with, it was so completely not what I was expecting (Dayspring)
• one I have not gotten to yet (King of Dead Things)
• two were complete disappointments (The Jinn Daughter and In Universes)

Four out of nine…is technically more than half? Much better than my most anticipated reads for March, anyway!

Misc

r/Fantasy’s yearly Book Bingo started this month, and I have already completed four squares! Yesssssss. That being said, some of the prompts are FAR outside my comfort zone this year – it’s going to be genuinely difficult to find books I want to read for a few of them!

I encourage people to check it out, though – it’s fun, and helpful if you have trouble deciding what to read! It’s not any kind of competition, it’s just between you and your tbr! I’d love to know if any of you decide to give it a go, though, so leave a comment if you do. Maybe we can brainstorm ideas for some of the prompts!

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At the suggestion of a reader of my blog, I’m going to be adding Adult/New Adult/YA as genres, and Protagonist Age (estimated if it’s not explicitly mentioned in the book) to my reviews. You might have noticed me doing it already – I think my mini-reviews and DNF reviews this month were where I started trying it out. The moment it was brought up I realised I should have been doing something like it all along – it’s a great idea, especially since I often don’t make it clear whether a book I’m reviewing is Adult or YA or what!

I probably won’t be going back to edit old reviews – there’s just too many of them at this point – but definitely including it in any new reviews from now on!

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Next month is Wyrd & Wonder, which is always a ton of fun. Luckily I’ve been prepping for a while now, so I should have some interesting rec lists and such coming up, including my annual recs of the most interesting magic systems and magical abilities!

Looking Forward

There’s plenty to look forward to in May! Not least a new Singing Hills novella, queers surviving the zombie apocalypse together, and magic gems picking queer teens to save the world!

May we all have a marvellous May!