A Descent into Dullness

October:
Short Fiction:
New Reads:  Vivian Cathe's (ed) Humans Wanted

• Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix Plus
• C.B. Lee's Not Your Sidekick
• Charles E. Gannon's Fire With Fire
• Ken Liu's Wall of Storms
• A.J. Hartley's Firebrand

Rereads: Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance & Gentleman Jole & the Red Queen

• Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time

Graphic Novels/TPBs/RPGs: Simon Spurrier/Tun Huat/Michael Del Mundo's X-Men Legacy: Legion v.1: Prodigal

• Greg Rucka/Matthew Southworth/Lee Loughridge's Stumptown v.1

Total: 12


November:
Short Fiction: Julia Keller's the Tablet of Scapttar
New Reads: Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer

• T. Kingfisher's Clockwork Boys
• Mia Archer's Villains Don't Date Heroes
• Brandon Sanderson's Oathbringer
• Jay Styrvant's Perfect Stranges, Black Friday, Over Our Heads & Head Down
• Jim C. Hines' Terminal Alliance
• K.B. Spangler's Stoneskin
• Eric Flint/Paula Goodlett/Gorg Huff's 1637: the Volga Rules

Graphic Novels/TPBs/RPGs: Christina Strain/Amilcar Pinna/Alberto Alburquerque/Eric Oda's Generation X: Natural Selection v.1

• David Willis' Dumbing of Age: The Machinations of My Revenge Will Be Cold, Swift, and Absolutely Ridiculous: v.6
  
• Chris Claremont/Bob McLeod/Sal & John Buscema/Ron Frenz' the New Mutants: Epic Collection
• Brennan Lee Mulligan/Molly Ostertag's Strong Female Protaganist v.2

Total: 16

December:
Short Fiction:
New Reads: Robin D. Laws' Blood of the City

• Chuck Wendig's Aftermath: Empire's End
• Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country
• Barbara Hambly's Dragonbane
• Seanan McGuire's Down Among the Sticks & Bones
• Paul Cornell's Long Day in Lychford
• Martin Scott's Thraxas
• R.J. Ross' Rainbow Rush

Rereads: Terry Pratchett's Going Postal

Graphic Novels/TPBs/RPGs: Jason Keeley/Owen K.C. Stephens/James L Sutter (dev team) Starfinder: Alien Archive

• Chris Hastings/Gurihiru's the Unbelievable Gwen-poole: Beyond the 4th Wall: v.4
• G. Willow Wilson/Andrian Alphona/Takeshi Miyazawa's Ms. Marvel: Mecca: v.8
• Ben Aaronovitch/Andrew Catmel/Lee Sullivan's Rivers of London: Night Witch

Total: 13

April
Short Fiction: Marie Brennan's "From the Editorial Page of the Falchester Weekly Review", Glenn Hirshberg's "Freedom is Space for the Spirit", Tara Isabella Burton's "the Destroyer" & Genevieve Valentine's "La Beaute Sans Vertu".

New Reads:
Brandon Sanderson's Calamity and the Bands of Mourning.  The first finishes up his supers' trilogy and the latter is part of his steampunk-era "Mistborn" series.
Steven James' Blur.  An ok YA paranormal mystery.
Daniel Jose Older's Midnight TaxiTango.  2nd novel of his "Bone Street Rumbo" series.
Tim Dorsey's Florida Roadkill.  First foray into Dorsey's  modern crime/pulp stuff.  A bit too wide a spread of characters and plots for me.
Adrian Tchaivosky's Guns of the Dawn.  A black powder-fantasy book where one of the two warring nations begins conscripting female soldiers to shore up its manpower shortages.  Feels a little like of an Austen character was the lead in a Bernard Cornwell Napoleonic book.
Elizabeth Bear/Sarah Monette's a Companion to Wolves.  Monette is the writer of the Goblin Emperor under a pseudonym and Elizabeth Bear is Elizabeth Bear.  So this is very well written.  It also has a LOT of really graphic gay sex, much that borders on the edge of non-consensual.
Daniel Abraham's the Spider's War.  The final to "the Dagger & the Coin" epic fantasy series which features the heroism of the banking system and using it to fight mad, religious tyrants.
Seanan McGuire's Indexing: Reflections.
Charlie Higson's the Enemy
Sherwood Smith's Remnala's Children.  Some follow-up stories to the Crown/Court Duel books.
Michael Shea's the Extra.  Future dystopia where filmmakers can literally kill off their extras in movies.
Emmie Mears' the Masked Songbird.  First of Mears' "Shrike" supers series.

Rereads:
Eric Flint/George Huff/Paula Goodlett's 1636: the Kremlin Games, 1636: the Barbie Consortium & 1636: the Viennese Waltz
Iver Cooper's 1636: Seas of Fortune
Lois McMaster Bujold's Captain Vorpatril's Alliance & Gentelman Jole & the Red Queen

Graphic Novels/TPBs/Rulebooks:  I'm moving rpgs and other non-fiction here since I don't really go thru enough of it for its own category.
Faith Erin Hicks's the Nameless City.  Alt history in a pseduo-China/Mongolia border setting.
Ultimate Intrigue (Pathfinder).  I liked this sourcebook quite a bit.  The roommate fell in love with the evil version of the Leadership feat and other new rules for his wizard/rogue crime boss.

Total books: 22


May
Short Fiction: Theodora Goss' "Red as Blood and White as Bone", Emmie Mears' "Uncaged", Brit Mandelo's "the Pigeon Summer", P. Djeli Clark's "a Dead Djinn in Cairo", K.B. Spangler's "Who Tells Your Story", Dennis Danvers' "Orphan Pirates of the Spanish Main" and Seanan McGuire's "Waking in Las Vegas".

New Reads:
Sharon Lee/Steve Miller's Alliance of Equals.  Their most recent "Liaden" novel.  Actually an eARC for the most recent.
Elizabeth Bear's Karen Memory.  Steampunk/Western with a bisexual female prostitute as the lead.
Emmie Mears' Rampant.  2nd "Shrike" novel which are set in Edinburgh.
Kameron Hurley's Mirror Empire.  Super-grim and violent fantasy series about parallel worlds and invasions between them.
Marko Kloos' Chain of Command
R.J. Ross' Cape High Christmas
Kate Elliot's Jaran, An Earthly Crown, His Conquering Sword & the Law of Becoming.  Both a pseudo-Mongolion horde "fantasy" and a Conquered Humanity sci fi series.
Alex Shvartsman (ed) Funny Fantasy.  What it says on the box.  A collection of previously published comedy fantasy stories.
Nick Mamatas/Masumi Washington (ed) Hanzai Japan.  Japan-set scifi, much with a noir or horror slant to it.
Amy Poehler's Yes Please.  Poehler's autobio.

Rereads:
Andre Norton's Gryphon in Glory.  While this was a reread, I honestly couldn't remember anything at all going in.
Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small

Graphic Novels/TPBs/Rulebooks:
XCrawl (d20).  Picked up on the cheap with a stack of other rpgs from Bookmans.  Competitive reality show dungeon crawling works better in concept than the actual execution.
Mike Maihack's Cleopatra in Space vol. 3: Secret of the Time Tablets.  Caps off the trilogy with a reveal of the origin of the big bad and some idea of why Cleopatra of all historical figures.
Scott Snyder/Jock's Wytches.  This was honestly one of the more disturbing horror comics I've read in awhile.
John Layman/Rob Guillory's Chew vol.11: the Last Suppers & Chew vol. 10: Blood Puddin'.  I actually ordered and read vol. 11 and then realized I'd skipped the 10th volume.
Krazy Krow/Rocio Zuchhi's Spinnarette: Crisis in a Bunch of Ohios.  Latest print collection of the supers/humor webcomic.
Kiyohiko Azuma's Yotsuba&! vol.13.  We get to meet Yotsuba's grandmother.

Total: 24


June:
Short Fiction: Harry Turtledove's "Typecasting", A.J. Hartley's "Chains" and Monica Byrne's "Traumphysik".

New Reads:
Cat Valente's Speakeasy.  Roaring 20s plus Faires with Valente lyrical-style.
Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver.  Paranatural-YA with external temparture triggered werewolves.
Ian Thomas Healy's Tusks & the Lion & the Five Deadly Serpents.  "Inception" style dream adventure and 70's era kung fu in Healy's "Just Cause" supers setting.
Naomi Novak's League of Dragons.  The finale for the "Tremaire" series.
Jim Hines' Revisionary.  And another finale, this time for the "Libriomancer" series.
Drew Hayes' Corpies.  I like Hayes' supers books, but they all feel like they could use another editorial pass once they're collected together from his original free chapters online source.
Jennifer Henshaw/Allison Lin (ed) Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft.  There are some really good scifi stories in this collection.  No really.
Ryan North's Romeo and/or Juliet.  I do like that several of the ending options involved the teens just talking to their parents and avoiding a whole lot of deaths.
Andre Norton Cat'seye. Human/animal psychic partnerships.  Different from the "Beastmaster" ones.
Chuck Wendig's Atlanta Burns.  Kind of white-trash "Veronica Mars".  Or maybe Really Angry and VIolent "Nancy Drew".

Reread:
Terry Pratchett's Wee Free Men, a Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, I Shall Midnight & Shepard's Crown.  Shut up, I'm not crying.  You're crying.

Graphic Novels/TPBs/Rulebooks:
the Dresden Files RPG: Your Story (FATE)
Evan Dahm's Vattu: the Sword & the Sacrament
C. Spike Trotman (ed) New World: An Anthology of Sci-Fi and Fantasy
Jim Zub/Steve Cummings' Wayward vol. 3
Tony Cliff's Delilah Dirk & the King's Shilling.  To England!

Total: 22

Short story wise for back in May we had the Litany of the Earth by Ruthanna Emyrs a CoC mythos story on faith from the perspective of the near human.  The Steel Soldiers' Gambit by Ian Thomas Haley, part of reading the remainder of his "Just Cause" supers series, where a robot bluffs a mentalist at a poker game.  And then a tale of artistry, obsession and justice with Walking Stick Forest by Anna Tambour...

Decided to start adding in a few of the trade/graphic novels for the month.  At least the ones that feel note-worthy.  Starting with Andre the Giant: Life & Legend by Box Brown.  Excellent biography, well worth getting.  Then we've got The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys by Gerard Way & Shaun Simon (words) and Becky Cloonan (draws).  Which is a story of rebellion and sex robots and humanity vs. safety.  And finally Mike Maihack gets a collection of his webcomic Cleopatra in Space.  Well, more an expansion then a collection.  This (hopefully) first volume covers the origin of the time-plucked space heroine...

John Allyn's 47 Ronin is far from the first adaptation of the Japanese historical folk-tale.  But at least his doesn't have Keanu Reeves as a half-breed wizard.  Or whatever the movie was about.  Ok book though...

I may start putting off getting the Goodlett edited Grantville Gazette's until I can buy them in big blocks once or twice a year.  Because once again I can't remember much of anything from this volume without pulling up my copy...

Sparrow Hill Road by Sean McGuire is a ghost story and a collection of road stories and a love story.  Also sort-of an "InCryptid" novel, but only a bit...

After reading Neil Gaiman's M is for Magic collection I swear I'd already read it.  I've probably just run across several of the stories in other collections.  The one about the cat and the devil I've definitely read somewhere else...

Blake Crouch's Grab (though my copy says Snatch) is the third "Letty Dobesh" story.  This time recovering addict Letty ends up in Vegas recruited as part of a multi-million job targeting a legendary thief...

I ended up giving up on Chad Leito's the Academy, some kind of dystopian future, super-soldier training, deadly cabal yadda yadda thing.  Nothing in the first third managed to really hold my interest...

So after reading the prequel to Sherwood Smith's Crown Duel, Stranger to Command, I reread the former.  Again.  Because I'm always curious to see if more information on the antagonist of the first half of the book makes me want to smack them in the gob less.  And because this reread involved the expanded e-edition, which adds several viewpoint changes of pivotal scenes, this actually happened.  Mostly because you can know see the character thinking about how he is completely fucking up every encounter he has with book's female lead...

As mentioned earlier, I grabbed up the remainder of Ian Thomas Healy's "Just Cause" supers series.  Day of the Destroyer, the Archmage, Just Cause Omnibus and Jackrabbit.  I think I liked the last one the most, where a teen has to fight an alien invasion after getting divinely empowered by the god Rabbit.  Giving him super-rabbit powers...

Chuck Wendig's psychic heroine "Mirriam Black" takes a visit to the Florida Keys to face another crazy with their own twisted psychic gift in Commorant...

Bonnie Shimko's You Know What You Have to Do left me feeling sad and unsatisfied.  Mostly because the ending didn't feel..finished really...

Elizabeth Bear's Shattered Pillars very much scales up the tension and conflict of her "Eternal Sky" series.  As a middle book should...

Jim Butcher's latest "Dresden Files" book Skin Game brings back the Denarians, with Harry forced by his service to Winter to work with them on a heist of the vault of Hades...

I sort of feel that Elizabeth Moon's Crown of Renewal shouldn't have quite so many unfinished plot hooks lieing around in it, if its actually meant a finale for her "Paksworld" series...

I'm not sure what lead me to backing Kelly Thompson's Kickstarter for her Storykiller book.  Its a good book, one of those All Stories are Real kind of things.  Mashed up with some Chosen Girl butt-kickery.  Sort of a Fables meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I just wasn't familiar with any of her previous work.  Probably did it from a rec from someone whose work I follow more closely...

And finally finished the month with another rereading of Lois McMaster Bujold's Captain Vorpatrill's Alliance.  Of the various "Vor" books I'd say I still like A Civil Campaign best, but CVA is the one I've been going back to the most frequently.  Flustered Ivan is even better than flustered Miles I guess...

Total Books: 22