Seven books in March, with a total of 2,068 pages, which takes me to 26 books and 6,817 pages. A slower pace because of gaming reading and conventions.
A single non-fiction, Polar War by Kenneth R. Rosen. I bought this on the back of an interview with the author and was initially taken aback; I was expecting a technical analysis of the potential threats and conflicts in the Arctic, but the book is more a series of vignettes with different people and places across the arctic circle. However, there was a thread through the vignettes that showed the threats and conflicts and drew it together.
Fiction-wise I read Adrian Tchaikovsky's Days of Shattered Faith. It's the third of his Tyrant Philosophers series. This expanded the background and started to explain why particular polities in the series behave the way they do. I enjoyed meeting the characters and it was as intriguing as the other books, and again very different.
I had a bit of a palette cleanse after that with The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James. This is the third of her books I read, and again it blends a murder mystery (in this case across two different timelines) with the supernatural. Quite a satisfying book; I enjoyed the way that the stories intermeshed.
The final novel was a re-read of William Gibson's Neuromancer, which was as fantastic as ever. As it was a book club read, it was fascinating to hear from people who didn't encounter this when it first came out and who had later references such as The Matrix in their head when they thought about cyberpunk. An enjoyable chance to reflect on a book I love; I've moved onto the next in the Sprawl Trilogy as a result.
I also read three roleplaying game books; a re-read of Deepnight Legacy before I ran it, then the first volume of the Great Rift sourcebook. That was enjoyable, and a bit different. Finally, I read The Laundry Supervisor's Guide. This is a wryly written background lore book for Charles Stross' series. I am tempted to run something with this, but I'll wait until I've read some of the scenarios before I make a final decision.
1 April 2026
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