Well, my great American roadtrip is over, which means regular blogging will now resume. The first part of that will be catching up on reviewing the books I read last month, but there will also be plenty of time to read and review more books too. Let’s take a look at what those books might be.

TBR

It’s official, I have enough books to see me through to the end of the year. That’s a good position to be in, as it means I don’t need to tangle with crowds of holiday shoppers in search of new releases. For November’s reading, I have four primary targets.

The first is to get back to some Star Trek with the two-part Avatar series by S. D. Perry. These are the books that kicked off the Deep Space Nine relaunch, and basically ignited the Litverse as a whole. I am reading this universe in bits and pieces, hopping around the chronology, so it will be nice to get back to basics. Since they’re short books that likely won’t take too much time, I might also jump ahead to Perry’s Rising Son as well.

My other tie-in plans are for something of a Cadian double bill. Robert Rath’s The Fall of Cadia and Jude Reid’s Creed: Ashes of Cadia are a pair of Warhammer 40,000 novels that look as though they’ll complement each other very well. They’re also pretty chunky by tie-in standards, which hopefully means lots of the grimdark good stuff.

Turning over to original fiction, I’m going to start pecking away at my Ben Bova TBR. Mars Life is the obvious place to start, especially as a massive fan of the other Mars novels. After that I’m torn between his Star Quest and Asteroid Wars series, as I have half of each. Time will tell if I cave in and order the missing volumes online, or if I just skip ahead a little.

The last author I’m definitely getting around to is H. Beam Piper. The funny thing is, now that I have all of his Federation/Empire books, I kind of want to space them out a little. After all, there won’t be any more. I’m going to read The Cosmic Computer first, and see if I am once again addicted before deciding where to go from there.

And if any of these plans don’t come to fruition, I have plenty of random books to fill my time with. If I dip into the unfamiliar, it will either be Jean Johnson’s A Soldier’s Duty for some military SF drama, or A Million Open Doors from John Barnes for a spot of big, idea-driven science fiction.

& BEYOND

I’ve got three big things going on this month. The first is SciFiMonth, in which various bloggers come together to talk about science fiction. Since that’s what I do all month every month, I figured I may as well take part again. Anything to get more eyes and ears tuned in to science fiction. There are a bunch of prompts that will be popping up throughout the month, as well as the usual slew of reviews. I hope you’ll all join in the fun with that.

The second is less relevant to the blog, but I am taking part in NaNoWriMo. Writing has taken an unfortunate backseat for me recently, and I’m going to use the fifty thousand word challenge to get back into the right headspace.

Finally, I am determined to get back to the more academic side of blogging. The next step of EMPIRES OF SCIENCE FICTION is to pick away at the shadow of the Roman Empire in science fiction. It’s a meaty task, and features a fair few incredibly popular books. As a slight side project, I also have the germ of an idea for a deep dive into the works of one particular author, but I’m keeping that up my sleeve until it’s good and ready.

RELEASE SCHEDULE

I’m going to limit my purchasing for the rest of the year, but it never hurts to keep track of upcoming releases. here’s some of the stuff I’ve got my eye on for November.

4th: Warhammer 40,000: Galaxy of Horrors , by various authors – This one is very tempting. A massive anthology of fiction from new and established authors, in the same vein as the recent Only War collection. If I happen to be passing a Warhammer shop, I’ll probably stick my head in and see if there’s a copy floating around.

4th: Warhammer 40,000: Da Gobbo Rides Again, by Ruairidh James – Continuing the wonderful festive tradition of ork and grot novellas, this nifty little hardback sounds just as charming (if grots can have charm) as the others. James is not an author I’m familiar with, but novellas are a great way to get a handle on someone’s style.

7th: Dregs of Empire & Other Stories, by Christopher Ruocchio – This is my only planned purchase for the month, with my eyes on the Anderida books edition. I’m not going to shell out for the slipcase, but it nevertheless looks like a fitting capstone to a trilogy of short fiction collections from one of my favourite current authors.

10th: Apple TV+ For All Mankind – The fourth season of Ronald D. Moore’s alternative history show brings the space race up to 2003. Though the character drama can get stretched at times, the optimism and sense of adventure in this show is unrivalled anywhere else on screen.

20th: Princess of Dune, by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson – The Dune movie may be delayed until next year, but we still get a new book. This one is a standalone that sounds like the seemingly-abandoned Irulan of Dune has been given a new lease of life. I’ve fallen behind on my Dune reading, but I have a feeling I’ll enjoy this one when I get to it.

21st: Skyward #4: Defiant, by Brandon Sanderson – I’ve slightly fallen out of love with Sanderson these past few years, and with this being the climax of the Skyward series, it feels like a chance to close a chapter on one stage of my fandom. It also marks the end of the only Young Adult science fiction series I’m currently reading, which is a major milestone in its own right.