I think this was a pretty good month? I did get ill – technically I’m still ill, I have about a week left of the medication I need to take – but despite that, I think things were mostly good. I spent a lot of time hanging out with my partner – I’m not sure there’s anything better than when we’re both free of brain-fog and have the spoons to discuss and debate everything from books to Genshiin Impact to the research techniques of various podcasts. (OR LACK THEREOF. SO SUPERNATURAL, I’M LOOKING AT YOU.)
And of course, there were MANY incredible books to read!
ARCs Received
The majority of this month’s arcs are 2027 releases! That is somehow so weird to me. EVEN WEIRDER IS THE REALISATION THAT 2027 IS ONLY FOUR MONTHS AWAY. WTF.
Strangers’ Gate – in a future where the US has finally banned firearms, someone’s released a virus that stops bodies from producing testosterone. I am so interested in the worldbuilding here!
Chimera – do you remember how in Animorphs, they had to touch an animal to be able to transform into it? This is a little like that, except the shapeshifters have to EAT the beastie they want to be able to turn into. And it’s Gretchen Felker-Martin, so we know it’s going to get fucked-up!
Where Fire Reigns – THE SOUND I MADE WHEN THIS APPEARED IN MY INBOX! Legit scared all the pets. This is the second novel by Jared Pechaček, and after I loved his debut so much, I am WILD to start reading this!!!
The Queen’s Mistress – sapphic knights and queens and much intrigue is promised!
A Mouth Full of Fins – translated from Korean; a queer woman inherits an aquatic pet store, and finds a mermaid captive in the back of the shop. Who will only recover if she gets to eat humans. I PREDICT AWESOMENESS!
Godburned – FOZ MEADOWS’ NEW BOOK!!! I have been pining for this since a publishing friend heard he was shopping it around. AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
The Light Between Wounds – angels and demons surrounding a chronically ill protagonist? GIMME.
Firstdawn – poly urban fantasy from Lana Harper, whose prose I ADORE!
Read
20 books this month! Neither more nor less than last month, which was also 20, but very respectable!
GODS there were some stunners this month! Rugosa Coven was a take on suburban urban fantasy that delighted me in its second, expanded edition even more than the first did; Dance of Burning Blades, the second book in the epic science fantasy Invoker trilogy, simply ROCKED; A Snake Among Swans was a tough read (so much misogyny for the characters to deal with) but worth it; Wickhills gave me such an ODD setting, with seriously cool worldbuilding, that I would like to emigrate actually please; Rogue & Vagabond was extremely charming despite being very low-magic (which is not a complaint); Light & Earth & Marrow was a look at environmentalism via being good neighbours to the Good Neighbours, and left me with plenty to think about; Salt King took me completely by surprise and blew me away with its absolute GORGEOUSNESS; and The Devil in the Dust more than convinced me that I want to read the rest of the Outremer series!
I don’t usually draw attention in these posts to books I didn’t enjoy, but I have to say that I fucking despised Little, Big. I’m utterly baffled by its acclaim. Is everyone who likes it okay. Who hurt you. Blink twice if you need rescuing!
By BIPOC Authors: 7
2026 Releases: 10
Indie: 10
Rereads: 2.5 (the .5 is for Rugosa Coven; I read the first edition years ago, but this new one has been edited and expanded a lot!)
Books From Authors New-to-Me-This-Year: 8
26 Books For 2026: 0
r/Fantasy Bingo: 1 or possibly 2
Books Going on My Best-of-Year Lists: Dance of Burning Blades, Snake Among Swans, and Salt King.
DNFed
From 20 DNFs in July to just 8 this month! I approve immensely! Let’s try and keep this up, please!
Reviewed
Stunned and really, REALLY happy by how many reviews I got done this month! (Not the order they were published in, but the order in which I wrote them!) I was really happy with the reviews themselves, too, which isn’t always the case!
Next Up
The Feminism in Fantasy bookclub on r/Fantasy is reading Dreamsnake next month, and since this is both one that’s been on my tbr forever AND fulfils squares on several of my bingo reading challenges, I plan on joining in. I’ve got two Chaz Brenchley books high on my tbr; His Martian Apprentice is his newest release, but I’ve just finished book one of his Outremer series so I want to get to book two! Hemlock and Sage and Loom Tree are both books I’ve been eyeing for months, and on top of allll that, I’m getting twitchy wanting to do some rereading: I just discovered that Queen of Ieflaria has a new expanded edition; Many Drops Make a Stream is one I still need to review; and Elizabeth Kostova is releasing a sequel to Historian in October so I want to reacquaint myself with it!
Though we all know I’m DEFINITELY not gonna find the time for all of these…
ARCs Outstanding
Unmissable SFF Updates
I added a few books to this year’s Unmissable list, so it’s now 85 books long! These were books I added after I’d already read them – A Snake Among Swans, and Salt King.
And the 2027 list continues to grow! 48 books now. IT’S GOING TO BE SUCH AN EXCITING BOOK YEAR!
How did my predictions/anticipated reads for August go? I declared four books Unmissable for this month, and–
- one was a five-star read (Halls of the Dead)
- one was a four-point-five star read (Daggerbound)
- two I DNFed (Divine Gardener’s Handbook, Viper Among Kings)
Exactly 50%! Hilariously, that’s probably the best prediction rate I’ve EVER had for a month! (And let’s be real, probably the best I ever WILL have…!)
Misc
Top Ten Tuesday gave us the chance to look back on what we were reading on a given day for the last 10 years! Interesting exercise.
I got fed up waiting for someone else to do it, so I created the Can’t Wait Sci-Fi/Fantasy of 2027 list on Goodreads this month. (There’s no rule about who sets it up, which I belatedly realised!)
Around the Bookish Internet
Kit Whitfield has a new book out next year!!! UK-only for now, but that has not stopped me managing to order it.
A whole bunch of next year’s titles from Tor et al were revealed on their website! Many of which you can already preorder, if you read ebooks – I got in preorders for the new books from Catherynne Valente, Neon Yang, Vajra Chandrasekera, Ada Palmer, Nghi Vo, and Charlie Jane Anders! (Links take you to that author’s new book, not an author bio or whatever.)
Christina Orlando did her usual call for authors to tell her about their 2027 releases, which put a TON of new books on my radar! I strongly suggest looking through it. (And if you, like me, REALLY want to hear about Mei Goodwin’s sapphic pegasus-riding series, but don’t have a subscription to the Bookseller, there’s a description here!)
One book I didn’t see shared with Orlando is The Tower, which is about an architect who literally falls in love with a blueprint she’s made! Link to the author’s bluesky thread on it, which has me SO HYPED. (I think it has since been added to the thread!)
Cool news from Wizard’s Tower Press – they’re translating a short story collection by a Finnish author, and also Wiz Duos #4 has been announced! And will be VERY queer, apparently!
Grim Oak Press has been planning a special edition of Kushiel’s Dart (one of my favourite books of all time!) for ages, but it was delayed and delayed. Now we know it’s because they took their time finding the perfect cover artist! I am SO good with this! It also means the book is likely to be available for preorder sometime in Q4 this year, so if you’re interested, go sign up for the press’s newsletter and all to make sure you don’t miss it! I’m not checking every 10 minutes or anything, why would you think that
The winners of the Hugo, Lodestar, and Astounding Awards were announced! Best Novel and Best Novella both went to my picks, which delights me. CONGRATS TO EVERYONE!
Looking Forward
This is actually the calmest September on my book release calendar in a few years, but there’s still plenty to be excited about! FIYAH, the spec fic magazine that features African and Diaspora authors, is giving us a compilation of 10 years of their faves in Forged In FIYAH; Sorceress of the Sky Serpents sees the return of Eden Robinson, with secondary-world fantasy drawing on Indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest; Bone Brides features sapphic changelings and I could not be more here for it; Witches of the Wheel has been described as ‘for fans of The City We Became‘, which is all I need to hear; Dubious Clamor has ex-harpies and incredible-sounding magic swords; and of course Bodies of Magic, Freya Marske’s latest, a standalone about magical healers. (Which I have already read, and adored, and can’t wait till I can finally talk to my friends about it!)
Now let us all have a SPECTACULAR September!
I hope you like Where Fire Reigns as much as The West Passage!
I don’t know if this is just a neurodivergent thing, but the way the text is formatted on the cover makes me twitchy. I feel like it would look better if the ‘Where’ was higher, the ‘Fire’ in the middle of the bones, and then the ‘Reigns’ just above the [presumably] main character. [If what I just said makes the cover look wrong now, my apologies.]
The Lives of Christopher Chant was my first Diana Wynne Jones book [henceforth referred to as DWJ], so even though it’s not nearly as good as most of her other books, I still read it every so often. [Very biased–I don’t like the Chrestomanci series much at all.] May I suggest Deep Secret and The Merlin Conspiracy, two of my favourites, and two of DWJ’s best? If you haven’t read them already, that is.
I don’t get the hype over Little Big, either. I tried to read it ages and ages ago, and gave up after just a few pages. Since you maybe got farther than that, I’m curious–what made it so bad?
I’m intrigued by Vajra Chandrasekera’s new book; reluctant heroes seem to be one of his favourite themes.
Thank you!
No judgement re disliking Chrestomanci, Lives is the only one of that series I like. I reread over and over when I was little! And Deep Secret has been on my tbr for a while, but Merlin Conspiracy is another I read over and over – I had an edition with a GORGEOUS cover as a kid and it was one of my favourite books! (Back then I had no idea it was part of a series, that edition definitely looked like a standalone. Although I guess that’s fair since they don’t have the same characters or anything.)
I wrote a short ranty review on Goodreads for Little Big, so you can check that out if you like. The even shorter version might be, it’s pretentious litfic only pretending to be fantasy, and it’s rapey and gross as fuck.
I preordered the new Chandrasekera novel before we even had a description for it XD But yes, we’ve had a few reluctant heroes now from him! I do NOT disapprove!
Was your version the one from 2004 with the dragon made of Celtic knot shapes? I found that one at a used bookstore a few months ago, and picked it up for my friend, who also loves DWJ.
Nick is in both Deep Secret and Merlin Conspiracy, though he doesn’t have PoV sections in the former like he does in the latter. I think you’ll like his sister Mallory when you do get to Deep Secret. She’s one of my favourite DWJ characters. :D
As difficult as it is to just pick a few, here’s my top 10 DWJ books, in no particular order:
Dogsbody [CW: animal death and abuse], Fire and Hemlock, Dark Lord of Derkholm [this is the most “Discworld-ish” of her books], House of Many Ways, The Spellcoats [the most “Ursula Le Guin-ish”, and one of her few that’s part of a series, the Dalemark Quartet], Deep Secret, Merlin Conspiracy, Eight Days of Luke, Black Maria [renamed Aunt Maria in North America–silly people didn’t know it’s a card game, I guess], and The Homeward Bounders.
!!!! Yikes. O.O
It had me at ‘cable repairman and unwilling demigod’. :D
I *hate* Little Big. What a boring book, and so weird and slimy about it’s female characters. I remember Stone and Steel making zero sense, but it’s been long enough that I don’t remember the details. I read it because it’s very short but nothing stuck with me.
You must not have got on with The Lives of Christopher Chant? That’s a shame, I read it as a kid and found myself going back to it over and over as I grew up. Eventually I read Diana Wynne Jones’s essay about how she wrote it in the aftermath of mourning the suicide of a young boy she knew and a lot of things began to make sense to me. I think it has to have been some of the earliest neurodivergence rep I ever encountered and that’s why it hit me so hard even as a child. She was writing it before the term existed. She was mostly writing about herself in a lot of ways, I think. It was reassuring to have a book about how so many of your problems as a kid are caused by adults who can’t be bothered to really see you but just make a bunch of assumptions and the incredible harm that does, but also the idea that you can go on even if it does you permanent damage.
I cannot express how much it relieves me every time someone says they, too, hate Little Big. Boring, bad, DEEPLY gross and rapey, THANKS BUT NO THANKS. (Also, you read it because it’s SHORT??? Most editions are around 500 pages! o.o What do you consider a long book, then?)
Oh no, I didn’t dislike Lives, I just didn’t five-star-adore it! It was one of my favourite books as a kid, I read it over and over, the only one of the Chrestomanci books I really liked! I didn’t clock the neurodivergence rep? But I often don’t, if a character thinks the same way I do it just feels natural and I forget it’s not the default XD I didn’t know that, or about the suicide, either. The main reason it’s not a five stars read for me now, as an adult, is because it upset me so much that the adults were so terrible, but the narrative blames Christopher! The big reveal is that HE was being rude and awful all along, so it was justified how they were all treating him. UM???
But what you said about – it being about how many of your problems as a kid are caused by adults – that’s one reason it was so important to me when I was younger, I think. I wasn’t in Christopher’s situation, obviously (I definitely don’t have 9 lives!) but yeah, awful adults + other kids being my only allies. It feels like quite a lot of kid’s books don’t really acknowledge how often the problems are caused by grown-ups – maybe because the grown-ups are the ones writing them? I think that’s a fairly common theme in DWJ’s books though, isn’t it? I’m sure I remember it from some of her other books too.
Stone and Steel is short. I still have it somewhere.
Diana Wynne Jones uses to have a bunch of stuff up on her website but it was all taken down after her death. I went to see if the essay about Christopher Chant ended up in Reflections on the Magic of Writing but the book doesn’t have an index and I can’t find it. I did however find the essay I couldn’t find last time I flipped through the book about how books that treat fantasy as interchangeable with delusion are harmful, small victories I guess. Jones was heavily dyslexic and I suspect that was just a small part of it, but she lived at a time before we really understood neurodivergence. The only character she ever explicitly said was neurodiverse was Cat, who’s autistic and struggles to verbalize his thoughts. But I think these days we’d probably diagnose Christopher as being somewhere on the spectrum; which is part of what gets me so much about The Pinhoe Egg and where his and Cat’s relationship ends up. They finally get to this place where they can help each other, and part of that is Chrestomanci deciding to treat Cat as something much closer to his equal. It’s what Christopher wanted from his own mentor and which they never really managed to achieve. Have you read the other ones? It comes up in the short story collection and Conrad’s Fate.
The metaphor at work in Lives is that Chris is a Gifted Kid who uses his imagination to escape from the expectations that have been placed on him while the adults in his life systematically work to cut off that escape, all in the belief that they’re helping him. Christopher’s failure to read social cues isn’t the reason bad things are happening to him; it’s just a flaw he had no idea he even had until the end of the book because his brain doesn’t work that way. It’s a thing he carries his whole life that leads folks to misunderstand him. Remember how he can never remember anyone’s name unless they’re super important to him? (There’s a scene in Conrad’s Fate that I love where Millie and Conrad meet for the first time and talk about Christopher behind his back, listing all the things he does that they hate, and it leads to this adorable simultaneous realization that they both absolutely love him.) I honestly think it’s there to keep Chrestomanci from being both all powerful and perfect.
I found the essay! It was part of a lecture tour.
“This much comes from real life: Christopher was based on the son of ambitious parents I know, a poor boy who eventually committed suicide, being unable to stand the pressure they put on him, Christopher’s version of suicide is to scramble about in the spirit void of the Place Between and keep on losing lives– luckily he has nine. But he is also the other kind of hero, the Bear’s Son, in that he seems totally incapable of working magic and therefore incapable of fulfilling his parents’ ambitions for him. Significantly, it is Christopher’s father who had caused this incapacity. I made the lifting of this inhibition by Dr. Pawson as funny as I could. There seemed no better way to express the sheer joy of release.”
There’s more here about how his evil Uncle and Governess have corrupted the thing that saves him, his ability to travel between worlds, his imagination and the center of his personality, and how he has to fight off that influence but doesn’t really win because you don’t win against a history a child abuse. Also some great stuff about how meeting The Goddess, another kid who’s in his same situation, helps him hold on to his identity in the face of everything. I really don’t think she meant to imply that any of what happened to Chris was his fault, rather that he was changed by it and not in positive ways. We see that in Tacroy but also in Gabriel, in that sequence where we watch Gabriel go from being an innocent kid Christopher could have been friends with to the bitter, resentful, unhelpful Chrestomanci that Christopher will end up modeling himself in complete opposition to. Flawed parent figures were pretty much a constant in Jones’s books, even when they were main characters too. Christopher grows up to be a flawed father figure himself, which is why watching him continue to learn to be better means so much.
Sorry to write a whole essay, I’ve just always found these characters so interesting. There’s so much too them and she managed to fit it in such a tight narrative.
Apologies! I misread your comment, obviously. Stone and Steel is a TRAINWRECK. I hated it. Amazing story premise, but it didn’t fit into novella form, the plot relies on an unbelievable amount of coincidence, the characters are flat, and worst of all, it’s impossible to tell who is speaking at any time because the author doesn’t start a new paragraph when a new person is speaking :) I was ready to tear my hair out halfway through.
That’s such a shame that they didn’t leave that stuff up on DWJ’s website. I had no idea she was dyslexic! Gods that’s impressive. And yes, I agree, I’d definitely guess Christopher was on the spectrum. And Cat was my first thought when you mentioned neurodivergence in her work! I haven’t read Pinhoe Egg, but I might have to now, because that sounds so wonderful. Cat and Christopher both deserve a relationship like that.
I can absolutely see the metaphor now you’ve explained it – that all makes so much sense! Chris as Gifted Kid/’high functioning’. Oh meep, I’m having feels. IT IS TOO EARLY IN MY DAY FOR FEELS THIS INTENSE! (That is not actually a complaint, I’m just all flaily now!)
Thank you so much for finding the essay! Do you have a link to the rest of it? I’d really like to read it. There’s clearly SO MUCH in Lives that I never picked up on at all. (Which means probably in the rest of her books too!) I always knew she was an incredible writer but I’m having a galaxy-brain moment here – she was writing on more layers than I had ANY idea existed, and I love that. Especially because the metaphors around Chris are what they are – writing on multiple levels is ALWAYS cool, but everything you’ve explained is making me emotional (in a good way) like another metaphor might not.
THERE IS NEVER ANY NEED TO APOLOGISE FOR WRITING LONG COMMENTS! I’m just flattered and grateful you went to the effort. And your long comments are always really interesting! So thank you :D
https://www.dianawynnejones.com/diana-in-her-own-words/heroes The essay/lecture is back up on the internet here. It’s very long and this version lacks some of the punctuation (quotation marks, italics) that the original had but I think it should still be legible. At least it’s still available without needing to buy the hardcover (like I did…)
What a post! I can’t tell you how happy I am to have found your blog! The Venn diagram of our taste in books is basically a circle (and I absolutely love your reviews).
I’m so incredibly excited to read the new Natasha Pulley book (I love basically everything that woman writes). And I squealed when I saw Foz Meadows has a new book coming out next year!
Eeeeee, thank you so much! Always delighted to have a fellow reader with excellent taste here :D I love how running this blog has made it so much easier to find other readers with my super niche tastes!
I LOVED SALT KING SO MUCH! The new Pulley book! Instant five stars, going on my best of year list, oh my GODS. Easily my favourite book of hers! AND THE NEW FOZ MEADOWS BOOK SOUNDS SO FREAKING GOOD TOO! Have you read his Manifold Worlds duology???
I’m seventh in line for Salt King at the library, and I honestly can’t wait! READ FASTER PEOPLE!
I haven’t read the Manifold Worlds duology! I had only read the Tithenai Chronicles, but I’ve just reserved those at the library now. I can’t wait to check them out!
Are you going to be the person to get me to break my very unofficial Natasha Pulley boycott? Very maybe. Her premises always look so delectable. Also, you know that I’m interested to hear your thoughts on Where Fire Reigns.
What did you end up thinking of Fortune’s Wake?