July has been a month of alternating heatwaves and thunderstorms, so it’s only appropriate that I’ve been burning through my TBR and having a rather wet response to a lot of books. In many ways this was a month of finishing things off. Not only my general TBR, but also the very last of my SPSFC involvement, and also my final LARP event of the year (from which I have just returned). The last part of that clear up is my monthly roundup post, so let’s get into it.

Reading Stats

• Books Read: 12
• Pages Read: 5148
• Pages per Day: 166.06
• Average Star Rating: 3.5
• Book of the Month: Ashes of Man, by Christopher Ruocchio
• Remaining TBR: 21

Book Haul

Despite making good progress on my TBR problem (if one wants to call it that), I ended up with an additional book overall this month, in no small part due to a last-minute gift from a family member.

• Star Trek: DS9: Fallen Heroes, by Dafydd ab Hugh
• The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction, edited by Mike Ashley
• The King of the Spoil, by Jonathan D. Beer
• The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF, edited by Mike Ashley
• Star Trek: DS9: Station Rage, by Dian Carey
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
• Shadow of the Eighth, by Justin D Hill
• Star Trek: DS9: Warped, by K. W. Jeter
• Star Trek: DS9: Objective: Bajor, by John Peel
• Star Trek: DS9: Betrayal, by Lois Tilton
• A Call to Arms, by David Weber, Timothy Zahn, with Thomas Pope
• A Call to Vengeance, by David Weber, Timothy Zahn, with Thomas Pope
• To End in Fire, by David Weber & Eric Flint

Reviews

Aside from falling slightly behind in the past few days, I’ve managed to keep up a steady supply of reviews. Here’s the usual list:

• Book: Hunters in the Dark, by Peter David
• Book: The Rion Forge Trilogy, by Kelly Gay
• Book: Serpents Among the Ruins, by David R. George III
• Book: Leviathan, by Darius Hinks
• Book: Knight of Talassar, by Nick Kyme
• Audio: Choose Your Enemies, by Sandy Mitchell
• Audio: Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, by Michael Reaves
• Book: Fabius Bile: The Omnibus, by Josh Reynolds
• Book: Ashes of Man, by Christopher Ruocchio
• Audio: The Bacta War, by Michael A. Stackpole
• Book: Lords of Uncreation, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• Book: Headlong Flight, by Dayton Ward
• Book: Hearts and Minds, by Dayton Ward

Articles

Two very different articles from me this week, standing at polar episodes of what book blogging is about. On the one hand, we have fun little tags, and at the other we have academic deep dives.

• The Mid-Year Freak-Out Book Tag
• What is Science Fiction?

SPSFC

As a final contribution to the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition, I posted A Farewell to the SPSFC. Equal parts reminiscence and tell-all exposé, it seems to have struck a chord with a lot of people, so I’m glad I went ahead with posting it.

Updates

The other big news from me this month was that I finally launched my Discord server. So far there’s just a couple of us, but everyone is welcome to join if you wnat a place to talk about science fiction. You can find more details HERE.