In Short: March

Posted 31st March 2021 by Sia in State of the Sia / 0 Comments

It’s not been a great month; despite an incredibly wonderful birthday (the 1st) arranged by the hubby, my fibromyalgia has left my hands in pieces – meaning I can hardly read a book, nevermind review it. I also had (very!) minor surgery on my left arm, which has not helped with the not-able-to-read/write issue.

Oh well. Did the best I could anyway!

Books Read

14 books, and two novellas (or a novella and a short story?) I may have to just accept that that’s my average, since that’s three months in a row now I’ve only managed 14 full novels.

Trying to find out how many of the authors I read last month were queer felt really creepy and invasive, so I’m not doing that again. (Besides, #ownvoices is incredibly important, but I do think it’s different for queerness than it is ethnicity. Lots of queer people aren’t public with their queerness, and shouldn’t have to be if they don’t want to.) So I’m going to count race and gender (as best I can) but not queerness, since I have no idea how many of the writers I read might be in the closet.

So in March, out of 13 authors, I read;

  • 12 women + 2 men
  • 3 authors of colour

I guess that’s better than the single non-white author I read in February, but still not great!

Of the books…

7 Rereads

  • In Other Lands
  • Sparrow Hill Road
  • Mistress of Spices
  • A Dead Djinn in Cairo
  • Door Into Fire
  • Girl in the Green Silk Gown
  • Palimpsest

4 Arcs

  • A Summoning of Demons
  • Hall of Smoke
  • A Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry
  • No Gods, No Monsters

5 New-to-Me

  • The Haunting of Tram Car 015
  • The Echo Wife
  • Heart of Stone
  • Paladin’s Strength
  • Call of the Bone Ships

Books Reviewed

Technically I did manage five reviews – same as last month – but two of them were mini-reviews so I’m not sure they should each count as a full review… I’m disappointed, but also glad at what I managed with my hands in such a state.

Books DNF-ed

Birds of Paradise was too slow – the plot had barely begun at the 40% mark – and The Wild Ones was just plain bad. You can read my review of it here.

ARCs Received

I finally managed to stop requesting so many arcs, and I’m very glad! But I did get access to several of my MOST ANTICIPATED READS OF THE YEAR, so, you know, pretty freaking delighted about that!

Unfortunately Wild Ones was a DNF for me (and a rare DNF review). Sankofa: Born Equal Only was a book I hadn’t heard of, but saw on Netgalley and thought looked pretty interesting. The writing style takes a little getting used to, but I’m enjoying it so far!

ARCs Outstanding

I feel like I’m not really making progress with my arc backlog, and I’m annoyed because that was specifically what I wanted to spend March doing.

(Technically I have now read Lady’s Guide, Hall of Smoke and Summoning, but I haven’t reviewed them yet!)

Looking Forward

Happily, April has a whole bunch of releases I’m excited about! Although there’s not much info available for The Other Side of Magic, the author has stated that the entire cast is queer, so that + the magic promised has me eager to get my mitts on it. I didn’t enjoy Rossner’s previous book, because half of it was written in verse and I kind of hate novels in verse, but I have high hopes for The Light of Midnight Stars – not least because it’s supposed to feature an F/F relationship where one of the girls is a star?!

House of Hollow grabbed my attention with its cover and sealed the deal with the excerpt that was published online, which makes it sound like it’s exactly the kind of prose that makes me swoon. And First, Become Ashes promises to be fucked up, queer as fuck, plus magic that may or may not be real. So, exactly my cup of tea, basically.

Here’s hoping and praying that my fibro will fuck off and let me get back to blogging properly next month! I have so many rec lists I’m dying to put together, not to mention all the reviews I have to catch up on.

Hope everyone else had a fab March! ONWARDS TO APRIL!

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