It’s June and I am sweltering in the early summer heat. Or maybe that’s just the warmth of hard work, who can tell? As we race towards the halfway point of the year (!) I’m turning my attention once more to the many books upon my shelf. You’re more than welcome to join me.

TBR

I spent most of the last month neck-deep in tie-in fiction. While I had a good time with it, I’m looking forward to branching out into more varied worlds in June. I’ve got another Halo novel and one Star Trek: Prey book left to catch me up with a few series, but otherwise it’s looking like an original fiction sort of month.

I read a lot of series at once, and funnily enough I now find myself in a position to wrap up a few of them in quick succession. I’ve got Earth Awakens by Orson Scott Card & Aaron Johnston, Descendant Machine, by Gareth L. Powell, and both Children of Memory and Lords of Creation by Adrian Tchaikovsky on the shelves, each concluding a series. That will be a massive weight off my TBR as we head into the back half of the year.

I also want to stay on top of my Stephen Baxter library, so The Thousand Earths is looking good for the next few weeks. On top of that, I’ve got a pair of older works Chronicles of the Star Kings by Edmond Hamilton, and Wasp by Eric Frank Russell. These are both authors I’m largely unfamiliar with, but I’m looking forward to seeing what I’ve been missing out on.

Once again, I’ll be using my random TBR dice to decide which order to read these books in, and I’m certain it will throw up some surprises along the way.

& BEYOND

The other big obligation is SPSFC2. I’ve got four more books to review, and those should all go public by the end of the month. At the end of all that, I’ll be announcing both my personal scores and the overall team scores for each book. The winner of the contest isn’t announced until July, but once that’s over I’ll have a concluding post on the whole SPSFC affair. I’ve decided not to come back as a judge in the future, so consider that my tell-all exposé.

In terms of articles, I have a long-gestating post on the SF Masterworks still half-written, and a grand plan for a little way down the line too. More immediately, I’ll be doing a look back at the first six months of the year, and a Wishlist update towards the end of the month. These articles all take a little more time than my usual reviews, and SPSFC is currently dominating my priorities, so don’t hold your breath.

Release Schedule

The only release I know of for June is the newest Warhammer Crime novel The King of the Spoil, by Jonathan D. Beer, which has no set release date other than ‘June’ but to which I am very much looking forward. There’s also a strong chance that Darius Hinks’ Leviathan hits shelves at some point this month, and Black Library have recently teased a summer of Astra Militarum novels. If these do release, I’m sure I’ll have a busy month of pre-orders. At this moment, however, nothing is set in stone.