We have been reading Chapters 14-18 this week, with a big plot reveal and some major character development. Expect spoilers as I set the questions for this week’s discussions…
We promised a casual ScifiMonth this year, but that doesn’t mean we’re not monitoring comms and standing by to boost the signal. Lisa and I will be doing 2 logs this month: today, we’re revisiting the posts from the first two weeks and we’ll be back at the end of the month with a final round up.
Week two saw me go from half a chapter at bedtime to mainlining chapters to find out what happened (I’ve zoomed halfway through week three’s chapters now) and realising I was going to need to write notes to keep track of what thing happened on what planet. Dammit, when did I stop just absorbing that sort of detail like oxygen?
This year, we’re returning to Ann Leckie’s much-awarded debut for our ScifiMonth read-along. The Justice of Toren is a Radchaai troop carrier, bringing her cargo of ancillaries – once-human soldiers, now mere bodies slaved to her consciousness – to its new conquests. Trouble is stirring at the empire’s edges that will one day lead to sole ancillary leaving the Radch in search of a weapon that can kill its millennia-long leader Anaander Mianaai.
I’m seizing the opportunity offered by today’s ScifiMonth prompt to round up the SF I’ve read and loved over the past 12 months. I’ve been particularly bad at both reading and reviewing in 2025, so it’s good to pause and reflect on what I’ve enjoyed.
Is it Friday already? Awesome, that’s day when your ScifiMonth co-captains throw a theme out into the universe and see what top fives our crew come back with. We’re kicking off this year with the journey not the destination to explore physical, metaphysical, psychological, emotional, culinary, ecumenical (I typed this as a joke then thought of 3 books that suited it, whut) but never banal journeys.
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish, and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It’s all about books, lists and sharing the love we have of both with our bookish friends. I’m mixing our TTT prompt of the first ten books I randomly grabbed from my shelves with our ScifiMonth prompt of nonlinear equations (aka chaos) to share randomly selected SF titles that I still need to read.
Close your eyes. Feel that strange sensation whooshing over your skin? That’s the dislocating feeling of being whirled away to another place and time. November is here, which means ScifiMonth when we share our love of a favourite genre with an amazing crew of geeks across the verse. Let’s do this!
My October plans were disrupted by high winds (thanks Amy) and a work trip to London for my company’s tenth birthday celebration. I’ve spent most of the month being surprised it’s nearly winter, although we got one last summery day for a walk before winter’s darkness.
When the tyrant who rules your land with an iron grip demands you revisit your worst nightmare to save his children, you obey. Knowing what they face in a dark, haunted land, you obey. Knowing what horrors your family face if you don’t succeed, you obey. Without hope, perhaps knowledge will see you safe home.
Is Barbara Hambly’s The Time of the Dark the perfect portal fantasy for Spooktastic Reads? Probably. A PhD student and a biker artist are pulled across the Void into Darwath, where the Dark is rising after thousands of years slumber. Humanity’s fragile hope rests on a tiny baby who might grow up to remember how the Dark was defeated – if he lives that long. This epic backlist gem is guaranteed to give you shivers.
This Spooktastic Reads prompt is where this year’s Wyrd & Wonder maritime fantasy theme meets the atmospheric thrills of spooky season. I’ve always loved tales of ghost ships, so today I’m sharing five of my favourites. You can decide what to believe and whether you’ll think of them next time you set out to sea…
Welcome to Spooktastic Reads, when your Wyrd and Wonderful friends indulge in 13 days of haunting reads from the darker side of fantasy. I’m still edging my way back into reading and blogging this month, so naturally I have wildly ambitious ideas that may or may not survive contact with the first jump scare…
We’re a little later than usual in pulling the dust covers off the good ship ScifiMonth, but there’s no keeping a good crew grounded! We’ll be back this November for our annual celebration of all things SFnal and we hope you’ll join in the fun. We’re keeping it low key this year, but we’ve got banners and a theme and a read-along brewing, and we’ll see what else we can rustle up over the next 30 days. Start the countdown…
I didn’t mean to drop off the blog at the end of July, but it was a messy August. A close family member was rushed into hospital, so my focus switched to trips up and down the country to support at home. Happily all has ended well, but it left me neither reading nor blogging as I scrambled to stay afloat at work. On the plus side, I finally got to meet my stepbrother. September has been about getting back outside to enjoy the rush from summer into autumn.
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