February was a bit all-over-the-place: I got my surgery finally, and today the hubby had his (much bigger) operation as well. (He’s all good, I’ve talked to him, but they’re keeping him overnight so I get him back tomorrow!) I ran up against some really fucking awful ableism in the postal system, of all places, and after 6+ months deliberating the doctors have decided they can’t possibly diagnose me with ADHD without records from my primary schools, which – I went to 14 of them all over the planet, several of which I know don’t exist any more, others I don’t know the names of because I was so little. The parent who had guardianship of me then is dead, the other parent has no idea where I was going to school, and the family records turned to mush in an outdoor shipping container over a decade ago. So that is not happening.

(Don’t ask me why they can’t diagnose the patient who is standing in front of them by examining…the patient in front of them. I have no clue. No one can give me an answer beyond ‘protocol’. If I ever have private healthcare again I’ll do it that way (the fact that private specialists do not need that childhood documentation tells me it’s not! medically!! necessary!!!) or else I’ll wait till we move to a country less fucking dumb about this.)

On the flip side: our Chihuahua clearly senses Spring in the air because he has been so much happier and more playful lately (he has very obvious Seasonal Affective Disorder, poor babs); a woodpecker visited our yard (I’ve never seen one so close up before!!!); and two different animals believed extinct have proven not to be, the Omeltemi rabbit and the world’s smallest otter! So things are far from all bad.

ARCs Received

‘No more arcs’, she said. ‘I can’t use Netgalley anymore’, she said. ‘It’ll be good for me’, she said!!!

Yeah, well. That didn’t work out. Clearly!

I’m not sorry, ESPECIALLY because I did indeed get to nab an arc of The Mercy Makers, which is a spiritual successor to Kushiel’s Dart but whose world is nothing like any period of our world’s history; it’s so good I can only read a few pages at a time before I start hyperventilating!!!

Read

Fewer books read than last month – only 18, compared to 21 books in January. That’s not much of a drop, though, which pleases me.

CJ Cherryh’s Foreigner series continues to wow and delight me – I read five instalments of it this month! – and Stormsong is so very excellent that I’ve been kicking myself for taking so long to read it! The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society surprised me by being a five-star read (I suspect I read it at exactly the right time to most appreciate it); A Bloomy Head was a historical romance rec from Felicia Davin’s newsletter, and an even easier five-stars, but as a Davin recommendation that was much less surprising. The gay-and-Gothic What Manner of Man wasn’t quite perfect but was damn great nonetheless.

I MASSIVELY enjoyed rereading the Sharing Knife series – Dag and Fawn are still #LifeGoals – and Swordheart! I couldn’t read the latter in bed, because my giggles kept waking the hubby. Eee!

(I did not, as is obvious, get around to finishing any Middle Grade books after all. I did start several, though!)

Reviewed

Only two reviews this month, neither of which were anything special, really. I’m glad I finally managed to review Gilded Crown, though, on my second read of it!

DNF-ed

Four DNFs – a totally reasonable number! Still not sure what I was thinking with trying to read Grave Empire, though…

ARCs Outstanding

How does the number of Outstanding go up??? Through your own ridiculous efforts, Sia. And yet I do not regret there being 35 of these! I just feel a bit embarrassed for some reason.

Unmissable SFF Updates

Lots of gorgeous covers added to the Unmissable list this month – I’m very starry-eyed! – and even after removing two books (when we got confirmation that they’ve been pushed back to 2026) we’re up to 81 unmissables. Including our first December release!

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

• one was a five-star read, albeit a reread (Swordheart)
• one was a three-and-a-half star read (The Desert Talon)
• two were DNFs (Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales and The Antlered King)
• one I haven’t finished yet but am enjoying (The Crimson Road)

Clearly, I continue to be Not Great at predicting these! Ah well.

Misc

I posted a list of no-romance recs for Valentine’s Day, because I am a contrary creature, and was delighted to learn it was of use right away!

In far less cool news, Amazon did in fact go ahead and remove the ability to download-and-transfer your ebooks on the 26th. (I know I mentioned the possibility a month or two back, but I was not expecting it to happen so soon!) You can still download books to your kindle via wi-fi, and if you know how to de-DRM (and use Windows) you can still download books to the Kindle For PC program and nab them that way. But it sucks. Luckily, I’d already started archiving my library and got it done before the deadline, but yet again: fuck Amazon.

In cool news again: I discovered that I’m being used as a source in the monthly Queer Releases posts over on the r/QueerSFF reddit! I may have squeed. ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED, for sure!

Looking Forward

The SFF year truly begins in March! The River Has Roots and Tomb of Dragons surely need no introductions, and Go Luck Yourself is the sequel to Nightmare Before Kissmass, which I unexpectedly adored. I Am Made of Death features a heroine who has to speak in sign language while looking for a surgical exorcism; Every Dark Cloud is post-apocalyptic Eco-Weird; and Once Was Willem has promised me biblically accurate angels and I intend to collect!

May March be marvellous for us all!