For whatever reason, the brainfog was very bad this month, so not a lot of reading or reviewing happened. But! I FINALLY BOUGHT MYSELF A KOBO! (And a beautiful cover/case from Swan and Siren!) And since I wasn’t up to reading, I spent alllll my time happily obsessing over setting up the Kobo, and then trying to organise my ebook library – both tasks being exactly the right mix of finicky and mindless that I could lose hours to either. So I did have a lot of fun. AND! MY MIGRAINES ARE SO MUCH BETTER! The new preventatives seem to be working incredibly well – I’m down to one or two migraines a week that each last only a few hours, instead of the all-day every-day nonsense I was dealing with before. WOO!

ARCs Received

I have been so spoiled this month!!! Especially with several indie authors reaching out to tell me about their books, ALL OF WHICH sounded right up my alley!

House of the Iron Reaper – a sapphic Cinderella retelling with Black dragon-shifters!

The Stars Will Be Our Ocean – anything comped to Memory of Empire AND Shape of Water goes directly onto my tbr, no questions asked!

A Dubious Clamor – a sapphic ex-harpy and a magical sword that cuts through certainty, up against conservative politicians? Um, yes PLEASE?

Locusta – a fantasy version of the famous poisoner‘s life? Don’t mind if I do!

Halfheart – a ‘structurally inventive’ Epic Fantasy standalone, from the author of the First Sister trilogy!

Light & Earth & Marrow – eco-fantasy queers!

The Jewel of Corlivo – the WAY the publicist sold this to me, oh my GODS! Recommended for fans of Guy Gavriel Kay, too!

The Eternity of the Orisa – Children of Blood and Bone, but for adults? Yessssssss!

The Finalist – a ballerina with chronic pain up against a haunted house!

The Splintered Sun – it’s been a LONG time since I last tried a Tad Williams book; this one is apparently queer, so I’m willing to dip my Iwas in again!

The Heresy of Thieves – listen, I could give you dozens of reasons I’m excited for this, but also, there’s a jewel-toned MANTICORE on the book cover and honestly, that should be enough to sell you on it!

Lipsnitch Snilly – this sounds utterly bizarre – a goat-person? Having seen the cover, is this Satan or something? But the author assures me the MC is VERY neurodivergent, so I’m interested!

Daughters of the Wind – more eco-fantasy, this time as an epic quest to save our world from climate change!

Death in Verse – you say ‘poetry magic’, I say GIMME!

Read

Just 12 books read this month – so few!!! Quite a plummet from May’s 20. But like I said, I really struggled to focus on anything, so reading was difficult. Sigh. I didn’t even have the urge to TRY most of the time – I didn’t even feel the desire to pick up books!!! So freaking weird. I spent a while wondering if I was ill, but I’m pretty sure it was just the usual stuff, maybe heightened by the summer heat.

With that in mind – The Forest Bleeds, The Gods Are Bastards, and Spacious Skies, Amber Waves all had me GRIPPED. The latter two are a mix of intrigue and classes at a VERY unorthodox university in a setting that’s Wild West meets Dungeons and Dragons; the former… I don’t know how to describe! A medical mystery on a time limit, because the researchers have been kidnapped, and there are monsters outside, and also it’s a coming-into-your-power story tied up with discovering/claiming your heritage. I might not have enjoyed any of them as much in another headspace, but I was very grateful for them this month!

Kushiel’s Dart, of course, is always magnificent, and it’s so familiar after so many rereads that I could concentrate on it just fine. Anne of Green Gables isn’t spec fic at all, and I vaguely remember reading it before as a kid, but I didn’t remember any details and I had a lovely time with it – very sweet and beautiful, a great before-bed book. I also reread Point of Hopes and Point of Knives for the sixth or seventh time, again as bedtime books I read aloud to my partner before we fell asleep. (He doesn’t care I’ve read it to him before – he remembers nothing of our bedtime books – and I like the familiarity, so???)

• By BIPOC Authors: 1
• 2026 Releases: 5
• Indie: 8
• Rereads: 7
• Books From Authors New-to-Me-This-Year: 2
• 26 Books For 2026: 0
• r/Fantasy Bingo: 1? Possibly.
• Books Going on My Best-of-Year Lists: Maybe Shape of Monsters, but this was my second read of it so far this year!

DNFed

Demon Star is only sorta-here; I’m seriously considering picking it back up and continuing, after I was given a very interesting-to-me spoiler.

Reviewed

Pathetic. I have a few reviews nearly-done, and several more started, but… I just couldn’t write this month. Sigh.

Next Up

Three of these were just released today – I did have an arc of Pasha the Storm, but it was so full of typos I decided I’d wait for the final version and start over from the beginning. And Machine continues near the top of my tbr – the sequel to Ancestral Night, which I loved (although Machine is a standalone sequel – same setting, different cast!)

ARCs Outstanding

Unmissable SFF Updates

No additions this month, but we did get some cover reveals that I’ve added in!

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

• one was a five-star read (Muñeca)
• two were four-and-a-half-star reads (Unmagical Life of Briar Jones, Shape of Monsters)
• one was a three-and-a-half-star read (Wanted Boys)
• three I DNFed (Disco at the End of the World, Endless Blue Beneath, Feywild Job)
• one I’m not going to be able to read, because there’s no e-version (Agnes, We’re Not Murderers!)
• two I haven’t started yet because they only released today (Everybody’s Perfect, Pasha the Storm)

Best-case scenario, if I love Everybody’s Perfect and Pasha the Storm, half of this month’s Unmissables will have been. My stats continue to be not-great, but it’s still fun keeping the list and counting them out every month!

Misc

I spent a lot of this month working on my annual Every Month Is Pride post – a round-up of queer Adult SFF coming out July-December. This year’s is MUCH longer than the previous ones I’ve done (you can see 2025’s here, and 2024’s here!)

But I still found time to review my new Kobo, comparing it to my old Kindle Paperwhite. (Spoiler: THE KOBO WON BY A MILE.)

Around the Bookish Internet

Ada Palmer has written a ‘big, deeply-built, intricate Norse myth fantasy’, and we’re getting it next year!!!

Gabriella Buba’s next book, Alchemist of Bohemia, got a cover reveal! I loved Buba’s Stormbringer duology, so even though the description of this one doesn’t sound very Me, I’m still planning on giving it a try.

There was also a cover reveal for Elaine U. Cho’s next book – The Final Death of Namjoo Han! I loved her debut and I’m reading the sequel now; this one’s DEFINITELY going on my tbr!

Pagebound, the replacement for Goodreads, opened applications for librarians! If you like obsessing over book details and you meet the requirements, you can apply!

The Inda series by Sherwood Smith is getting a new edition! This is one of my favourite High Fantasy series, with absolutely INCREDIBLE worldbuilding and a magnificent autistic lead. The new edition is going to be ‘revised and updated’, which is exciting! The link (only to the first book of the quartet, no links for the others yet) is to the Big River site, but it should be available in all the usual places, especially at Book View Cafe, which is publishing it!

Looking Forward

July is a slower month in terms of book releases that excite me, but there’s still plenty! Misery’s Wife sees a trans woman go on a kind of fairytale quest to rescue her long-lost sisters, and Snake Among Swans is high fantasy following a princess aiming to take down the enemy’s court from the inside. Lord of the Wood follows a very different kind of lord, an elemental tied to a forest. Kloud9 is that rarest of things, a graphic novel I’m excited for, with queer space magic and gorgeous art!

That’s a wrap! Wishing us all a jemmy July!