Well folks, it’s July. That puts us squarely at the middle of the year, and my eyes are firmly fixed forwards. Though I haven’t been actively disappointed by much of my reading lately, I am looking to branch out into new things. Of course, to be able to do that, I’ve still got a few ongoing concerns to take care of. The big relief is that my SPSFC days are over, so I’m able to get to those things that have, until now, been forced to take a back seat. So let’s take a look at what I’ll be up to this month.

TBR

I’m kicking off the month with a book that I’ve been putting off for far too long. Despite having issues with the direction the last book took the series in, Christopher Ruocchio’s Sun Eater Sequence is still my favourite ongoing series. I’ve had Ashes of Man since January, and I finally have enough of a gap in my reading schedule to give it the time it deserves.

As a person who reads a lot of tie-in fiction and shared universes, one problem I run into quite a bit is getting stuck reading the same thing for long periods of time. My TBR is now sufficiently reduced in stature that this is even more apparent. I’m going to tackle this head-on by binging Kelly Gay’s Rion Forge trilogy in order to take a sizable bite of my Halo TBR, and doubling down on enjoying some Warhammer 40,000 omnibuses from Nick Kyme and Josh Reynolds. I’ve also managed an impressive streak of reading at least one Star Trek book every month this year, and I look set to continue that trend in July, which likely means a return to the Deep Space Nine Relaunch.

That’s a fair bit of reading and will likely take me most of the month. If I can squeeze in an extra book, it will be something by Adrian Tchaikovsky, as either of his books currently in my TBR will wrap up a series. I’ve made the lightly painful decision to hold off on any more Stephen Baxter until I’ve concluded some ongoing series.

& BEYOND

Outside of the usual reading and reviewing, I’ve got a couple of things I’m working on. The most pressing is my SPSFC retrospective, which I’m holing onto until this year’s winner is announced. This will be a fairly lengthy post that is taking a lot of editing as I compile my thoughts on two years of judging the contest, and the lessons learned along the way.

The other big project is finally launching my bookish Discord server. I’ve had this in the works for six months now, but have never been sufficiently happy to make it public. That’s set to change this month, though I have some last minute tinkering to do beforehand.

Once I’ve got that up and running, I’m going to (finally) turn my attention to writing my Empires of Science Fiction essays. These are an expansion of my MA dissertation, and it’s been an interesting trip building up a bibliography so far. I’m eager (and a little worried) to see what the reaction to more academic content will be, and there’s only one way to know for sure.

There’s a small chance I’ll have an author interview coming this month as well, but that all depends on me finishing an ARC in a timely manner, so will probably end up being an August post rather than a July one. This interview and review pairing will be a little outside my usual wheelhouse, but I’m looking forward to both of them.

RELEASE SCHEDULE

1st – Warhammer Crime: Melita Vordnova #1: The King of the Spoil, by Jonathan D. Beer – The newest Warhammer Crime novel promises a slice of gang warfare on the streets of Varangantua. I’ve only read Beer’s short stories before, so I’m looking forward to his novel-length debut.

21st – Foundation Season Two (AppleTV) – I still haven’t got round to watching the first season of this show, but the arrival of the second has rapidly moved it up my viewing schedule. It’s clearly a very different beast to the books it’s based on, but everything I’ve seen so far has me excited nonetheless.

24th – The Lost Fleet: Outlands #3: Implacable, by Jack Campbell – The final act of Campbell’s latest military SF trilogy looks set to be suitably explosive. This is a trilogy that has rewritten the rules of the universe, so I’m curious as to how it all holds together in the end.