Ironically, I’m a day late posting this, but my plan for April’s reading is to finally get on top of things. Is this an omen of skewed plans to come? Who can say? The important thing is that, vague and amorphous though it may be, I do have a plan for my April TBR.

April. Or should I call it Catch-Upril?

No. No, I probably shouldn’t.

I’m not someone who reads trilogies back-to-back. At least, not very often. As well as reading multipole ongoing series as they release, I also dip in and out of older series with wild abandon. Every now and then the mood strikes me to clean up my reading a little, and with my TBR looming menacingly over my bed at night, I think April 2026 is the perfect time to start finishing off some series. To that end, I have rejigged my TBR to prioritise series I’ve already started reading. some I’ve only started fairly recently, but others have been rumbling away in the background for years.

Stephen Baxter’s Transcendent, David Drake’s To Clear Away the Shadows and Joe Haldeman’s Forever Free will all complete series that I started some time ago, so those are obvious priorities. Completing a whole series is a surprisingly rare feat for me, but always leaves me feeling satisfied. The Haldeman in particular has been a long time coaming, as The Forever War was one of the first books I ever reviewed in this blog, all the way back in 2018. I also hadn’t realised quite how many books Haldeman has written, so if Forever Free is any good, I’ll probably have a whole lot more reading material to look into.

Then there some ongoing series that I ought to get up-to-date with. With the Artemis II mission currently on the way to lunar orbit, it seems like there won’t be a better time to read Chris Hadfield’s latest space race thriller Final Orbit. I know there’s going to be at least one more book in that series, but there’s no word yet on when it will be published. I also plan to read Marko Kloos’ Descent, the fourth book in his Palladium series. I don’t know how long this series is going to be, but the alphabetic naming convention has me braced for something very long-running.

The other big catch-up project is my stack of Jack McDevitt novels. A Stack McDevitt, if you will. I’ve got two Academy novels and three Alex Benedict novels by McDevitt, one of which has been on my TBR since 2024. There are gaps in these series, but they mostly function as standalones, so I’m happy to leave those gaps unfilled for the time being. That being said, I doubt I’ll read all five McDevitts in a single month. I’m kicking things off with Echo, but will probably go to the Academy novels for a change of pace before continuing with Alex Benedict’s archaeological adventures.

It’s not just series that I need to get on top of, however. I also have a buddy reader, to whom I have promised a great many reads. One of those is Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, which we’ll tackle when I need a break from SF. The other two are a classic in the form of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, and something published this year in the form of Matt Dinniman’s Operation Bounce House. Dinniman is all over the online book community, so it will be nice to see what all the fuss is about. In addition to all that, the Boundary’s Edge Book Club will also be tackling Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers as our April buddy read. That’s a whole lot of reading, but at least I won’t be doing it alone.

I’m likely to do some kind of update on just how many series I have on the go towards the end of the month, and there could well be a ranked list of some of my favourite completed series, but otherwise I have no solid plans for articles this month. The main goal is simply to get back in control of this blog and get back to regular reviews.

Dates for your Diary

8/4 – The Boys: Season Five – Personally I think this show has outstayed it’s welcome by at least a series (and the spin-offs have me increasingly wary) but I’m looking forward to seeing how everything comes to an end. My guess is that will involve a lot of fake blood.

14/4 – The Faith of Beasts, by James S. A. Corey – The second part of Corey’s new space opera epic. The first book spent a lot of time on groundwork and worldbuilding, so this will hopefully be where we get to see more of where the story is headed. Regardless, I’m expecting good things.

17/4 – World War Dinosaur, by Victorious – Look, I’m not saying this album is going to change the world, but I do have a soft spot for incredibly stupid power metal. Sometimes I just want entertaining noises in my ears, and that’s all I expect from this band.

28/4 – Star Trek: Picard: To Defy Fate, by Dayton Ward – Not only a new Picard novel, but one that is (for all intents and purposes) set after the end of Season 3. While I had very mixed thoughts about that season, I’m excited to see what becomes of these tie-ins when they’re doing something other than character-driven prequels.

As always, if there’s something you think I’ve missed or should add to my plans, get in touch and let me know.