It’s been a pretty excellent book month! Which I am tentatively putting down to new medication that was supposed to cause less brain-fog; I haven’t noticed a change in my day-to-day, but my book numbers make it pretty clear SOMETHING has changed for the better!

ARCs Received

MANY WONDERFUL NEW THINGS TO READ! I may have actually gasped out loud when I got approved for The Nightward – I still haven’t dared start it. (You know when you’re SO excited for a new book that it’s difficult to start when you have it in your hands??? THAT FEELING!)

I was stunned and really touched when Miles Cameron reached out to offer me an early copy of Deep Black, which I’m already a third of the way through! IT’S EVERYTHING I WANTED FROM A SEQUEL!

And though I didn’t include its cover because it’s out already (so not an ADVANCED reading copy?) I received a very promising sci fi – Tactile Therapy – from a very promising self-pubbed author. I have my fingers crossed that it’s going to be excellent!

Read

THE FUCK. The last time I read 30 books in a month was February!!! After months and months of reading fewer and fewer books, this is a HUGE relief, and pretty solid evidence that the new meds are making a big difference. EEE!

Gods, I hope this is a permanent improvement. PLEASE let this struggling-to-read nonsense be over.

For new-to-mes, The West Passage, Relics of Ruin, Domesticated Magic, Rihasi, Asunder, Sunforge, The Pairing and Metal From Heaven are all especial stand-outs – but wildly different! (The Pairing isn’t even SFF, but DAMN, it was delicious fun!) Several are definitely going on my Best of 2024 list – it’s going to be a very long list this year, but since when is that a bad thing?!

Space Opera, His Majesty’s Dragon, and Four Kings were very beloved rereads. (I was reading HMD to the hubby as a bedtime book, and I’m tempted to reread the whole series now. I forgot how much I love Temeraire and Laurence!)

To the best of my knowledge, 10% of this month’s books had BIPOC authors. Aka, 3 books. Ffs.

Reviewed

SO MANY REVIEWS! I do regret that most of them were negative ones – why is it so much easier to write about books you hate? – but I’m very, very proud of my reviews for The West Passage and Long Live Evil. They both turned out so great!

DNF-ed

I accidentally posted my DNFs a day early (usually they go live on the second-last day of the month) which is why there are six here and only three in my DNF post – Interstellar MegaChef, We Are the Crisis and Tangled Lands I DNFed after that post went live. I’ll have to go back and edit it later.

I want to emphasise that I don’t think Time’s Agent, Education in Malice, We Are the Crisis or Tangled Lands are bad books – they just weren’t for me, for various reasons (although I really hope I pick up We Are the Crisis again later and have a better time with it then). Interstellar MegaChef… I really disliked it, but I think most readers will find it very approachable and a lot of people will enjoy it. Just not me!

ARCs Outstanding

Slowly, slowly picking away at my ARCs. I’ve read or am reading quite a few of these, but it’s the writing them up that’s usually the hard part!

Unmissable SFF Updates

My Unmissable SFF of 2024 list is always getting updated, what with cover reveals and new books being announced – or discovering books long-since announced, but which I didn’t hear about until just lately! After several new additions, the end of July brings us to a total of 103 Unmissable books!

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

• there were two five star reads (The Failures and The West Passage)
• one was a four and a half stars read (Long Live Evil)
• one was a three and a half stars read (The Spellshop)
• one was a two stars read (The Dissonance)
• one was a DNF (The Spice Gate)
• one was a soft DNF I’d like to try again later (The Moonlight Market)
• one I have not gotten to yet (In the Shadow of the Fall)

3.5/7! Not bad, but let’s see if August can do better!

Misc

Thing One: I got to beta-read for a friend this month, and was knocked FLAT by how good it was! And I’ve been having a lot of fun interacting with the other betas. I don’t think I should share any details here, but suffice to say I’m looking forward to featuring it on the blog someday soon!

Thing Two: I was selected/accepted to review august clarke’s Metal From Heaven for Ancillary Review of Books! I’m ridiculously excited about this, and more than a little nervous – it’s only my joint-most anticipated book of the year and the book blog I’m most impressed by – no big deal!!!

Looking Forward

Have I read some of these already? Yes. Does that make me any less excited for them? NO IT DOES NOT. August is PACKED with amazing SFF and I am HYPED! The Phoenix Keeper and Asunder are easily two of my faves of the year; Long Live Evil gets its main releases (the Irish and UK ebooks were released this month, everything else comes later!); The Girl in the Bog and The Maid and the Crocodile both promise a lot of fun; and there are some EPIC sequels coming, with Deep Black, The Sunforge, and The Republic of Salt!

May August be awesome for all of us!