Hello and welcome to my Monthly Roundup post for May 2022, which is a bit more positive than last month’s after a slightly more productive few weeks. It wasn’t so long ago that publishing eight new posts in a month would have felt like a very lean month, but after slowing down to only five in April I’m actually quite pleased with May’s output – not to mention the five existing Black Library articles that I updated as well (more on those later). As usual I’ll do a quick recap of May’s new posts – as well as the updated articles – and then move onto a general update for the month, where I’ll talk a bit about what I’ve been reading and just give an overview of how things have been going in general.
May’s posts
As I said, eight posts feels pretty good for May, and I’m quite pleased with the balance of posts – two author interviews, two articles, and four book reviews. Here they are, in the order in which I published them.
Monthly Roundup – April 2022 – I kicked the month off with the last version of this article, which I wrote at a time when I’d been really struggling to get much writing done. Thankfully, just the act of writing it gave me a bit of a productivity boost and helped me get back into the writing zone.
Opinions: Book Review Plagiarism is Weird – this one pretty much does what it says on the tin, being an opinion piece wherein I talk about the strange experience of finding out someone’s been pinching my reviews (and those of a few others) and passing them off as his own. Like the title says…plagiarising book reviews is a very strange thing to do!
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Ren Hutchings Talks Under Fortunate Stars – I chatted to Ren about her brilliant new space opera novel, discussing some of the themes in the book, the characters, the setting and even the original music that goes along with it! If I do say so myself, this is a really fascinating, quite in-depth interview – definitely check it out.
Ahriman: Eternal by John French – I was lucky enough to be bought a copy of the ‘Mega Edition’ boxed set of this new novel by my friends, who know full well just how much I love John’s Ahriman series…and I wasn’t disappointed by this new instalment! So much so that I’ve read it twice already – check out my review to find out what I thought about it.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: David Towsey Talks Equinox – for the second of my author interviews I spoke to David about this dark fantasy novel set in a world where every body is occupied by two people, one of whom is awake during the day and the other during the night. It’s such a cool idea, and it was great to get some of David’s thoughts on what this meant and how he found the process of writing the book (among other things).
Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings – once you’ve read my interview about this cool new sci-fi novel you can also check out my review. I absolutely loved Under Fortunate Stars, with its accidental time travel, unwilling heroes and strangely entertaining corporate bureaucracy, not to mention its considerable emotional heft. Definitely one to look into if you’re a sci-fi fan.
[IN BRIEF] A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers – I wasn’t going to review this, as I picked it up to read just for fun, but it was (in my opinion) such a perfect little story that I simply couldn’t help myself. Not everyone likes a novella but it’s a story length that I personally love, and this quiet, calm little tale of a tea monk and a robot was everything I wanted in this sort of story. Heartwarming and utterly lovely.
Equinox by David Towsey – another review following on from an interview, this time for a dark fantasy novel that goes to some really dark places (especially given how squeamish I am about eyes). The central concept of this world is really clever and explored in some fascinating ways, and while the plot is fairly gently paced it’s consistently compelling and thoroughly entertaining from start to finish. Quite unconventional, but very good.
Updated articles
I’m not sure why I seemed to suddenly get the urge to go back and update some of my older Black Library articles, but that’s what happened and so I figured I’d run with it! I didn’t make any wholesale changes or major rewrites, but rather small tweaks incorporating recent releases or bits of news into articles that I wrote a while ago.
A Guide to John French’s Ahriman Series – having read and reviewed Ahriman: Eternal I thought it was about time I added this fourth novel into the guide, along with a link to my review.
A Guide to Guy Haley’s Prince Maesa Stories – just a small update to this one, as I added in a note about the recently-revealed Prince Maesa fix-up novel that’s coming in June.
40k Reading Order: Sister Augusta – Danie Ware – someone asked about where the most recent short (The Moon-Mines of Sciara Lone) story fitted in with this series, so I checked in with Danie and added it in the relevant place.
Age of Sigmar Releases and Reviews – this is where I made the most changes, adding in a bunch of recently released and upcoming titles to the list and tweaking the release order to be as accurate as I could make it. I also added in the year of publication for each story, just in case that’s useful.
A Guide to Dan Abnett’s Inquisition Series – again this was just a small tweak, as I made a quick update to the Lepidopterophobia (short story) entry to reflect the fact that a) I’ve read it, and b) it’s available in a recent short story anthology.
General update
As you’ve probably gathered if you’ve got this far, May was a much better month for me in many respects – not just in terms of productivity, but also in a general sense of being in a better place. I didn’t read quite as many books as I did in April, but the 11 I read or listened to in May has taken me up to 62 for the year so far! I’ve said this before, but I honestly didn’t think I’d read anything like as much this year as I have – but I’m not complaining. In fact, I’ve just made the (in hindsight, inevitable) change to my Goodreads challenge to bump it up from 52 – which I passed at the start of this month – to 104. I’m still 20 books ahead of schedule, so I think I’ll probably manage it.
I’m not going to go through all of my reading and writing goals this time around, given that this article is already quite long, but I do want to talk a bit about a few different points of interest (to me, at least). Firstly, while I am generally hoping to read a nice and diverse mixture of books this year I haven’t actually been thinking much about which books I pick up recently, but just choosing them based on what I’m in the mood for. To my surprise then, over 80% of my May reads were written by women, and three were translated into English – from Korean, German and Japanese. I’m pretty happy with that, not least because all 11 books were so good!
A visual representation of everything I read in May – click to enlarge
What also surprised me was how much I was drawn to non-fiction – for possibly the first time ever, almost half of the books I read in May were non-fiction, ranging from nature writing to forensic anthropology. I’m not sure why, but I’ve particularly been getting into nature writing recently, and books like Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain continue to feel like exactly the right thing to be reading at the moment. Likewise Lucy Mangan’s Bookworm, which while not a nature book, certainly spoke to me as the memoir of someone who spent their childhood (and adulthood, for that matter) absorbed in books almost to the exclusion of all else.
May wasn’t all about enjoying my reading and getting back into the swing of writing, either. I thoroughly enjoyed getting out to my first in-person book event for years, in this case the Angry Robot showcase in Highbury (I couldn’t make the Manchester one, but I’d have been there too if I could), which was great. There’s something lovely about listening to authors discuss their work in a group setting (this event featured no fewer than six authors), inevitably getting into strange but entertaining conversations about each other’s books, and it was nice to be at this event in person. To be honest it still feels a bit weird to be around other people, and I think I’m probably being more cautious than most, but it was good fun nonetheless – and I particularly enjoyed getting to chat to the fantastic Gabriela Houston in person.
I’ll finish off by looking ahead to something I’m keen to read soon. I was absolutely delighted to recently receive an unexpected ARC of Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, the long-awaited third book in her Locked Tomb series. I want to make sure I get the most out of this, so I’m going to revisit the first two books in the series in audio before making a start on the new one – I’m a few hours into the Gideon the Ninth audiobook and having an absolute blast so far (I do love rereading – or re-listening to – books I loved the first time around). I’ll be reviewing Nona the Ninth for Grimdark Magazine, so keep an eye out for that – and if you haven’t yet read Gideon the Ninth, I would recommend it. It’s weird, but brilliant. You can read my review here.
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So there you have it, a slightly more balanced Monthly Roundup than in April, with a fair few posts to talk about as well as my general update. Here’s hoping for another good month in June (it’s my birthday month, hurrah!), and another positive roundup article in a few weeks!
I hope you had a great May, full of good books and (hopefully) reasonably decent weather, and likewise I wish you an excellent June!
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