Awful quiet around here, isn’t it? I think I must have set a new record for lack of posting this month, though I did manage to get something out at least once a week, which has been my intention all the since 2018 when I started this blog. Don’t worry, this lacklustre period is only temporary, and largely stems from that ongoing affair called life. Still, some things have been achieved, so let’s focus on those.

Reading

July has been a month of playing catch-up with all the series I’ve started but not finished. I had planned to finish the Star Trek: A Time T series, but upon discovering that the next book plays into the Section 31 storyline quite heavily, I backtracked and read the first batch of Section 31 novels instead. They were much, much better than I had anticipated, and are straight up there with the best miniseries Trek has produced over the years. I’m still not keen on Section 31 as an ongoing idea, but these novels put it to good use. Now I can finally go ahead with my return to the relaunch era of the Litverse.

The other big surprise was Roger MacBride Allen. I’ve read some of his Star Wars and Robot novels, but never any of his original work. My ongoing quest to complete the Venture SF range has changed that by introducing me to Aliens & Allies, his debut series. This military SF two-parter has been absolutely wonderful, and I’ll have a review up in the next few days.

Then there is my ever-evolving relationship with the Hugo Awards. I’ve read three Best Novel winners this month, all of a respectable vintage. Clifford D. Simak’s Way Station blew me away, but my opinion of Arthur C. Clarke’s The Foundations of Paradise and James Blish’s A Case of Conscience was far more muted.

Along the way I also finished David Brin’s Uplift saga, which sadly ended on a bit of a bum note, and continued with Warhammer 40,000 via Rich McCormick’s Lord of Excess, which was a mixed bag but largely a good time.

Blogging

All that reading leaves a lot of reviews to be written. Since I’ve been reading series in close sequence, I’ll be reviewing each series as a single unit, which naturally means those reviews have to wait until I’m done with the whole lot. As such, it’s looking like next month will have a decidedly Star Trek flavour, with as many as four reviews heading your way. I’ve been pottering away at these reviews throughout the month, so hopefully they’ll be finished before too long.

I did have plans for some half-yearly reports, but didn’t get round to them. If I get a chance, they’ll pop up in August.

In the News

Black Library: After a fairly quiet start to the year (including a slightly muted Black Library celebration), Games Workshop’s literary arm has come in swinging for the second half of the year, with a slew of announcements. Robbie MacNiven is back with a new Exorcists novel, Jonathan D Beer steps out of Varnagantua and into the Mechanicus with Dominion Genesis, Denny Flowers’ magnificent creation Lucille von Shard returns in Above and Beyond, and just today Darius Hinks’ Daemonhammer was announced. A good time to be a fan of the grim dark future.

Media Death Cult: MDC, the last remaining major book discord I was part of, will be going behind a paywall as of tomorrow morning. I have a lot of thoughts on this, few of them complimentary, which feed into my general opinions of the way online discussion groups have taken since the advent of the ‘content creator’ age. You can expect a longer post from me on this rather complicated topic somewhere down the line.

Updates

One oddity this quieter month has thrown up is the fact it hasn’t made too much of an impact on my overall views. The upside of this is that it means older posts continue to be popular. The downside is that it makes investment in new posts feel rather like a waste of time. I don’t intend to stop any time soon (unless by some miracle my fiction gets picked up by a publisher (one can dream)), but I have to admit, thinking about the numbers is starting to break my brain.

Or maybe it’s just the heat getting to me. I’ll be back tomorrow, and maybe I’ll have something resembling an answer.