August 2025 saw me read another eight books and 2,234 pages. For reference, this was one book and some 700 pages less than last year, but the data is a little inaccurate as I've actually read a raft of shorter 'In Nomine' supplements in PDF that I didn't bother recording.
So far this year, I've read 78 books and 19,886 pages. I am ahead on numbers of books read.
The mix this month included two roleplaying games, a short story collection and a single non-fiction audiobook. That was Borderlines by Lewis Baston, which was an enjoyable journey through the borders of Europe, illustrating how the interior of the continent has shifted around and the impacts of border changes.
The roleplaying games were both ones that I hope to run soon - In Nomine and Coriolis: The Great Dark.
In Nomine gives players the chance to be angels or demons, fighting the battle between heaven and hell on Earth. I will be running this at Furnace in October. I last played this some time back in the late nineties when it first came out, in an excellent game run by Ric based around the Northern Ireland peace process.
The Coriolis book is the sequel to the previous edition of the game; rather than rebuild the setting (after the three campaign books comprehensively trashed things and put everything up in the air), Fria Ligan decided to follow the story of a refugee/explorer fleet that set out beyond the Third Horizon, hopefully following the course of the Nadir, a lost colony ship. However, when they get to their destination, they find many problems; the setting is one of exploration, dungeoneering (almost) and factional conflict. It's much more slickly done and presented than Coriolis: The Third Horizon, but I still love the original setting. However, I hope to run the campaign set once it's available properly in the new year and I'm looking forward to a game with a very different feel.
The collection of shorts was the latest edition of Clarkesworld Magazine (#227). I've had a subscription for quite some time but rarely read them properly, so I'm trying to get better at that.
We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker is a twisty tale of small town drama, in which a criminal is released back into the community and not well received. Things escalate, and we follow the chaos that ensues, turning everyone's life upside down. Recommended.
The Hungry Gods by Adrian Tchaikovsky sees several tech entrepreneurs returning to Earth after many years on Mars and beyond, assuming the population has been wiped out with climate change and collapse. However, the survivors have been more tenacious than expected, and become involved in the very real struggle between the three returnees and their very different visions of what the world should be like. These visions don't really involve the survivors, who are an inconvenience. There are hints that the fate of their ventures may not have been as good as they like to make out. I did enjoy this a lot, but I preferred his previous book Bee Speaker, which I read back in June 2025, which has similar themes.
Ben Aaronovitch's Amongst our Weapons is the latest Rivers of London book. This returns back to the main character, Peter Grant, who is about to become a father. He faces some terrifying experiences, including the North of the UK! I really enjoyed this and the pages slipped past effortlessly.
The final book that I read was Richard Adams' classic Watership Down. I read this on a nostalgia trip while on holiday. As a child, my parents used to take us to Devon or Cornwall, and I'd have a pile of books to read (indeed, finding the space to stash them was a key part of holiday packing for the car), and this book was usually there (along with Andre Norton's Solar Queen, some of Rosemary Sutcliff's Eagle of the Ninth books, and others like Sir Arthur C Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama). Anyway, I decided to read it again, and was reminded just how well written it is. Delightful.
Overall, a decent month. It will be interesting to see how September will go, as I'm travelling for work a fair bit, but also have convention preparation to do.
1 September 2025
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