Welcome to the second quarter of the year, and another edition of TBR & Beyond. April should be a little less intense on the work side of things, so I’m hopeful for a lot more reading in the next thirty days. And if there’s a gap in posting towards the end of the month, it’s only because I’ve got my first day off in over a year planned.

TBR

Yet again I find myself in the awkward position of my priority reading for the month not actually being here. Christopher Ruocchio’s Kingdoms of Death is currently in transit, but I’ll be diving into it as soon as I can.

My other priority is the Star Trek: Coda trilogy, which is finally complete on my TBR. Having waited so long for Oblivion’s Gate to arrive, I’ll be reading the trilogy back to back. It is really does mark the end of an era for Star Trek, but I’m looking forward to it. And once it’s done and dusted, I’ll be able to work back through the Litverse at my leisure.

Aside from those priorities, I don’t have a terrible structured plan for the month. My only real goal is to clean out some of my TBR, and that will happen regardless of which books I read. Coming off the back of a month of Warhammer 40,000, I’m going to try and vary my reading a bit more. Right now, that’s probably going to mean getting round to those standalones I meant to read last month. I know I’m starting the month with some John Scalzi, but I plan to read Dana Abnett’s Embedded and J. T. Nicholas’ The Stolen Earth as well.

Kingdoms of Death is going to be some pretty heavy reading, so I’m going to sneak two novellas into the month as well to keep things light. That means Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Light Chaser by Peter F. Hamilton and Gareth L. Powell are both on the schedule. If I have time, I’ll also read the Expanse short story collection Memory’s Legion.

My Simon Scarrow readthrough is proceeding rather nicely, and I hope to finish another two volumes in April.

This gives me a monthly TBR that looks something like this:

• Embedded, by Dan Abnett
• Memory’s Legion, by James S. A. Corey
• Light Chaser, by Peter F. Hamilton & Gareth L. Powell
• The Stolen Earth, by J. T. Nicholas
• Kingdoms of Death, by Christopher Ruocchio
• The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi
• The Gladiator, by Simon Scarrow
• Legion, by Simon Scarrow
• Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• Star Trek: Coda: Moments Asunder, by Dayton Ward
• Star Trek: Coda: The Ashes of Tomorrow, by James Swallow
• Star Trek: Coda: Oblivion’s Gate, by David Mack

AND BEYOND

April is the month I catch up with Star Trek: Picard‘s second season. That’s likely the only SF viewing I’ll get up to this month, but it does give me time to catch up on a lot of my audio reviews. Picard is released weekly on Fridays (in the UK) throughout the month. Other than that, it’s looking like a fairly dry month for science fiction. Here are the releases I’m looking forward to:

5th: Skyward Flight: The Collection, by Brandon Sanderson & Janci Patterson – This co-authored omnibus gathers three novellas following Spensa’s allies across the events of the series. I’ve never read any of Patterson’s work before, so it will be interesting to see what the partnership produces.

28th: The Final Architecture #2: Eyes of the Void, by Adrian Tchaikovsky – The second book in Tchaikovsky’s space opera trilogy has a lot of promise to live up to, and is sure to feature even more unique aliens and original worldbuilding.

Unknown: Huron Blackheart: Master of the Malestrom, by Mike Brooks – I know nothing about this Warhammer 40,000 character whatsoever, but brooks is one of the best of Black Library’s current crop of writers, and I’m looking forward to whatever this one might be about.

Unknown: The Imperial Infantryman’s Handbook, by Graham McNeill – If this is what I think it is, then this should be brilliant. I still have a battered copy of the Uplifting Primer somewhere, and a revised edition is exactly what I need in my life right now.