Weekly Roundup

This week was the end of my month, so my Monthly Retrospective is out, along with my usual thursday review. I finished one book, continued another, and started a third. I’ve also got thoughts on three short stories from The Big Book of Modern Fantasy. Read on to find out more.

This Week’s Posts:

Tuesday: Monthly Reading Retrospective (August) – Where I look at how well I’m doing with my goals (pretty well) and pick out my favourite book of the month.

Thursday: Book Review: The Bone Ship’s Wake – Check out my rave review of the final book in the Tide Child trilogy. Such a great book.

This Week’s Reading:

This week I finished The Bone Ship’s Wake by R.J. Barker. The link to my review is above, and the glowing praise in that speaks for itself.

I’ve read several more of the stories from From the Neck Up, a collection by Aliya Whiteley. I’m a little more mixed on these ones than the first few stories, although I haven’t disliked any of them so far. More a range of pretty decent to good.

I’ve also started reading the Hexarchate Stories collection by Yoon Ha Lee. I love the setting of the Machineries of Empire series, and it’s great to come back to it here, even if not every story would pass much muster for me without that connection.

I have been doing some SPFBO reading – in fact a little more than usual, so I might not get through as much regular reading over the next couple of weeks.

The Slow Read Through The Big Book Of Modern Fantasy

In which I read and review at least one short story a week from The Big Book of Modern Fantasy, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer.

Polwana’s Orchid by Edgar Mittelholzer: A truly bizzare tale of a small creature trapped in an orchid and the drama of the insects that come to visit. In many ways it seemed to be a children’s story, but it was oddly compelling, with these little absurdist details that I enjoyed. 3.5/5

The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles by Margaret St. Clair: A wicked little tale about a rope salesman in way over his head as he tries to sell rope to some inhuman creatures. Great fun, killer ending. 4.5/5

O Ugly Bird! by Manly Wade Wellman: A fun folksy story about a travelling musician in America who finds a village terrorised by a man and his giant black bird. I enjoyed it. 4/5

Movie Thoughts:

Another movieless week.

Next Week’s Posts:

I still have a litrpg roundup post ready to go, and we’ll see if I have anything else for next week. I think one of my SPFBO reviews might be going out soon, which I’ll link here as well.

Next Week’s TBR Shortlist (Not including SPFBO books):

This week I picked up Hexarchate Stories from my TBR shortlist.

Here’s a link to my last Weekly Roundup, if you wish to compare the two. The same general books are popping up again and again, but every week I seem to shuffle them completely around at the top of the list! As I said before, I’m doing some SPFBO reading this week, so I might not end up picking up anything

As usual, let me know if there’s anything there you’d recommend!