Welcome to the latest edition of TBR & BEYOND, a new regular feature where I take a look at my TBR, run through my reading plans for the month ahead, and talk about science-fiction related things I’m excited about for the coming month. A fair bit of this is similar to the previous month, but I’ll do my best to keep repetition to a minimum. Without further ado, let’s get into that TBR.

TBR

There’s not a whole lot of change from the July TBR as we head into August. I’ve done the improbable and only purchased a single book in the past month. This means I’ve taken a sizeable chunk out of the TBR over the past 31 days, and hope to do the same again this month.

As you can see, the Star Trek tower has now been reduced to a single stack. I’m still some way off getting through the whole lot, but progress has been made. The big series this month is David Mack’s epic crossover trilogy Destiny.  After that, the various series cross and intertwine a lot, but I should get to the start of the Typhon Pact story arc in August. This part of the Trek readthrough is where there’s more rereads than new novels, but I remember only broad strokes of what I’ve read before and look forward to getting into them with a better understanding of the Litverse continuity.

The Dune reread is also proceeding at a decent pace, but that may falter a little bit this coming month. August’s rereads are Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune. AKA the part where the series gets weird. Neither one of these books is as long as I thought they would be, but they are a lot heavier than the previous volumes. I expect them to slow down my reading rather a lot.

Warhammer 40,000 marks the third big setting I’m working on at present, and I’m hoping to get most of the TBR content finished in that regard. Justin D. Hill’s Traitor Rock was my only July purchase. I considered rereading the previous Cadia novels first, but I really want to diminish my TBR more, so I’m heading straight into this third book. I’m also aiming to get Matthew Farrer’s Urdesh done this month, but The Night Lords Omnibus will wait another month

All this rereading and series readthroughs has left my general science fiction reading somewhat lacking the past few months, and I want to rectify that in August. Pierce Brown’s Morning Star is my priority so I can get another series completed, but Iron Gold and Dark Age are going on the back-burner for the foreseeable future. Boundless is a book I really meant to get to in July, so I’m redoing that intention for August. if I have the time, I’ll squeeze in Ten Low or The Recollection. Fallen Dragon will have to wait until I’ve got more of my Star Trek readthrough done, and the same is likely true for The Best of World SF Volume 1.

On the non-SF front, we still have Stephen Aryan’s The Coward, and of course S.

AND BEYOND

All the above is subject to change, of course, because August is a big, big month for new releases. August 10th sees the release of Marko Kloos’ Citadel, the third (and possibly final) book of The Palladium Wars.

Ben Bova‘s posthumous final release Neptune is out on the 17th, and I want to pick that one up to motivate me into reading more of his work. Also out on the 17th is J.S. Dewes’s The Exiled Fleet, a book where I really want to read book one, but am yet to see a copy of. A final August 17th release is John Jackson Miller’s Rogue Elements, the latest Star Trek Picard novel. I’m excited for this one, but have a lot of the older canon to work through first.

Then on the 24th we have Light Chaser, co-written by Gareth L. Powell and Peter F. Hamilton. These two have very different writing styles, so I’m interested to see how this one turns out.

On the 31st, we have the long-awaited release of The Albion Initiative, the sixth and final novel in George Mann’s Newbury and Hobbes series. I’ve been considering a steampunk celebration for September, and this could be just the kicker I need.

That’s it for books, but August is where SF TV season kicks of in earnest. On the 13th, we have the second season of Lower Decks. US viewers will naturally get it a day earlier. The 22nd will then see the beginning of The Walking Dead‘s eleventh and final season. Both of these shows look set to lead straight into their respective shared universes, so we won’t be short of TV as autumn creeps in.

What about you? What SF are you looking forward to reading in August? Let me know in the comments.