Well, I got laid off this month, which is going to slow down my book buying considerably. Can’t pretend I’m sorry to see the back of the company I’ve been working for, though. Ah well, onwards and upwards!

ARCs Received

I actually completely forgot I put a request in for Unbound, but I’ve been promised a dark-and-domme princess, so I’m very eager to get to it. And I got auto-approved by DAW!!! Which is extremely flattering. To Cage a God and So let Them Burn are two of my most anticipated releases of 2024, so I may have shrieked a little when I got my hands on them; and I’m rereading Notorious Sorcerer as fast as I can so I can jump into Shadow Baron!

RE The Dragons of Deepwood Fen; I’ve admired Beaulieu’s worldbuilding for years, though I never quite got into any of his previous books – but his worldbuilding talent + dragons??? Hell yes I’m pouncing on that!

Read

18 books read in August – quite a comedown from last month’s 32! But July was an outlier and should not be counted; even so, for a normal month, 18 is pretty low. Which doesn’t really surprise me, because I’ve definitely felt like reading is a struggle lately. Not because I’ve been stuck with bad books or anything! It’s just…really hard to focus on much for very long. Which is kind of a prerequisite for reading!

Amazing rereads – like Hunting and Stranger – aside, August didn’t have too many blow-me-away books. Prophet grabbed me by the throat, and A Door in the Dark only had me a little less hooked. The Undetectables was intense and weirdly wonderful (hopefully I’ll be able to put it better than that in my review!) and the Every Wickedness series continues to be amazingly indulgent and fun. MORE PEOPLE NEED TO BE READING TJ LAND, OKAY???

To the best of my knowledge, 11.11% of this month’s books were by BIPOC authors. Not good at all, but at least it’s better than last month? *winces*

Reviewed

I decided to start counting my mini-reviews – aka the Sunday Soupçons – because you know what? A fair bit of effort goes into those, actually, and I’m aware they’re much longer than what most people would consider a mini-review. So. Giving myself credit for them from now on!

That being said, I was really disappointed with my review of Pluralities; it’s very meh, when the book most certainly is not.

On the other hand, I poured blood, sweat and tears into my review of The Pomegranate Gate, and I think I came close to capturing how perfect it is. My review of it goes live tomorrow!

DNF-ed

Nine DNFs in one month is officially a new record – and honestly, I’m tempted to count THESE as reviews too, since I did a write-up on each one. Whatever; the important thing is, lots of these are actually perfectly good, or even VERY good, but just don’t gel with me specifically. You can check out yesterday’s DNF roundup for more details, if you want them!

ARCs Outstanding

I’m a little behind where I wanted to be with arcs and arc reviews by the start of September, but I’m reasonably sure I can still manage. Guess we’ll see!

Misc

Extremely belatedly, I managed to post my Every Month is Pride: Queer Adult SFF For the rest of 2023 list – I meant to have it up on the 1st of July, but oh well, better late than never?

Looking Forward

As we all know, September is a HUGE month for SFF – for most book genres, really – and there are MANY books I’m ridiculously excited for! I’ve gotten arcs of some, but others I’ll be going into blind – like The Spirit Bares Its Teeth, which promises, gulp, lots of eye-related body-horror, THAT’LL BE FUN. But it’s Joseph White, not reading it is simply not an option. And then there’s book SEVENTEEN in McGuire’s October Daye series, Sleep No More. Book seventeen! I can’t get over how impressive it is to have that long a series, especially a) one that doesn’t deteriorate in awesomeness, and b) in this day and age, wherein longer series seem a lot rarer than they used to be. I may also be going a little feral at finally getting my grubby paws on Cursebreakers, which sounds like it might as well have been written for me!

And that’s a wrap! May we all have a splendiforous September!