Gods, this month was a rollercoaster! My laptop was replaced with one that wrecked my hands within minutes, which wierdly enough sent me into a hard depression spiral; I had an honest-to-gods breakthrough in therapy (and I did not think breakthroughs were a real thing in the usual sense); my pain doctor casually mentioned in passing that the meds she’s had me on for the past half decade ‘compromise your cognitive abilities’, which explains so fucking much; my old laptop was repaired quickly and cheaply after I was told it couldn’t be done; and then my physiotherapist realised a lot of my pain was coming from sleeping on my front, and switching it up has been like MAGIC.

Pretty sure I read so much this month because if I hadn’t, I’d have had a full-on meltdown.

ARCs Received

Obviously the one I’m most excited for here is Witch King – it blew my MIND to get approved!!! – but I’m also knee-deep in Splinter In The Sky and sinking fast, and was delighted to discover that Ink Blood Sister Scribe features a queer character. The Pomegranate Gate is another of my most-anticipated reads, and I feel very loved to have been granted auto-approval rights to Kensington Books now that they’ve bought Erewhon (who auto-approved me a while back!) A Second Chance For Yesterday is a complete gamble, based on its comps to This Is How You Win The Time War – I guess we’ll see!

When the Stars Alight, Tell Me How It Ends, and Assassin are all self-pubbed – while I very much understand the stance, I don’t want to be a blog that has no space for indie and self-pubbed reads. Although it’s much more nerve-wracking to interact with authors directly – which is usually the case with self-pubbed – than with Netgalley!

Read

25 books completed this month – nice! About time things got back to normal around here!

And so many of this month’s books were AMAZING – Kirith Kirin completely swept me away; Godkiller blew my freaking mind; These Imperfect Reflections and So You Want to Be a Robot (same author, different penname) were both so perfect they physically HURT ME; I can’t believe it took me so long to read No Man of Woman Born, it knocked my fool socks off; The Winter Knight was beautiful; I’ll be thinking about The Lies of the Ajungo for a long time; and A Slice of Mars was pure delight!

(Rituals is also mindblowingly epic, but was a reread this month. I’m working on a review for it!)

To the best of my knowledge, just 9.5% of this month’s authors were BIPOC. Pretty appalling.

Reviewed

I really, really, REALLY wanted to get a whole bunch of reviews written this month, but between the laptop drama and my hands being disastrous, it didn’t happen. I’m really happy with how the reviews of The Winter Knight and Some Desperate Glory came out, though!

DNF-ed

Camp Damascus and Tell Me How It Ends are both it’s not you it’s me DNFs – they’re objectively perfectly fine, but they’ve not for me. Whereas Assassin reads like it was written for and by a twelve year old. Rosewater is very clever, and I think I can see why some people love it, but I was pretty grossed out by a lot of it; I made it past the halfway mark, but just don’t care about where it’s going, so. Shrug emoji here.

ARCs Outstanding

I still feel like I have no idea how to talk about The Archive Undying or The Saint of Bright Doors – maybe I should reread them both? There’s time before their reviews are due…

I have so many reviews to write.

Misc

I’ve been starting to switch my book-buying from the Big River company to Kobo. Yes, it’s a bit more expensive, but I can afford it (no judgement for those who can’t) and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how easy-to-use it is. And I just really like the thought that the authors of the books I buy get a bigger cut than they would from Big River.

(Yes, I use a Kindle, which doesn’t read ePub files, and all Kobo’s books come as ePubs. But that’s what Calibre is for!)

I took part in the Trans Rights Readathon and raised $80 for the A Place For Marsha Project – not a very dramatic amount, I guess, but $10 a book was really all I could afford, and it’s better than nothing! I was pretty damned proud of the SFF by Trans and Nonbinary Authors rec list I made for the readathon, too. (More than 40 books!)

And then one more rec list for the International Transgender Day of Visibility!

Looking Forward

Hands-down the the book I’m most excited for next month is The Best of Catherynne M. Valente: Volume One (I had to feature both covers for it here!) Frustratingly I’m not sure when next month we’ll be getting it – Subterranean Press have said both the 1st and 29th, so who knows? I’m really hoping we get an ebook edition I can read while my hardcover is on its way to me! After that, of the books I haven’t read, I think The Grief Nurse is the one I’m looking forward to next-mostest. I’ve heard so little about it, but the snippets I’ve heard have me rabidly curious!

Aaand THAT IS A FUCKING WRAP! Here’s to a much less hectic, much more marvellous April for us all!