In the mix were one SF short stories magazine, two non-fiction, three graphic novels, four roleplaying, and seven fiction books.
The magazine was Clarkesworld, as I read another of the back catalogue I have (#203). It was using my little Xteink e-Reader as part of the ongoing attempt to avoid doom scrolling social media. Glad I have this subscription as the stories are always thought provoking and it's nice to have a library to dip into.
The non-fiction books were both excellent. Eve MacDonald's Carthage: A New History of an Ancient Empire was mostly read in July, with me finishing it the first week of the month. It tells the history of Carthage (no surprise there!), which I was only vaguely remembered from the perspective of the Roman Empire. This was fascinating and interesting and reminded me just how nasty and expansionist Rome was.
I followed this up with Rob Cowen's The North Road which focuses around the A1 north south road in the UK, a place that I am very familiar with as I live in a town it connects to and I travel a good distance on it most weeks for work. I really don't know how to describe it's genre; part history, part autobiography, and part fiction, the author sets out with an objective to travel the length of the road and discover its history. However, it's also a way for him to find peace in himself from the way that his parent's divorce impacted him as a teenager. There are only a few fiction sections the book, and one of them about the Harrying of the North by William the Bastard (the Conqueror) has left me wanting to know more about that period. It's a part of the Norman Conquest of England that gets glossed over in history classes, but the systematic genocide of around a hundred-thousand people through murder and starvation in the north of England is brutally shown through a short story of two survivors. I really liked this book; it was always going to resonate with me as all the place names are familiar, but I won't be surprised if this is a strong contender for my best non-fiction book this year.
The graphic novels started with Brian Talbot's The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and Heart of Empire in a single volume. I've actually tried to read these several times; the first was thwarted by it revealing I needed to change to varifocal glasses, and I forget the reason I didn't conclude it the second time. However, the holiday we had on the Isle of Man gave me time and space to enjoy the stories. I do think that some of the text in the first book is challenging to read due to its size, but I don't regret getting back to this. The stories are told in very different styles (beyond the variations of black and white vs colour) and tell the tale of Luther Arkwright, an agent who can shift across multiverses protecting them against 'The Disruptors'. I followed this up with The Legacy of Luther Arkwright, a later follow up set quite some time after the original stories where Arkwright is called into action again. I'd originally intended to pass the books on once I'd finished them, but I think I'll probably read these again.
I followed this up with the latest compilation from Titan Books in their Blade Runner series, Black Lotus: Las Vegas, which continues the story of the protagonist from the Black Lotus anime series as she ends up in the remains of the city of vice after the dirty bomb, a story we first glimpsed in Blade Runner 2049. Enjoyable, and I'm looking forward to the next one.
Roleplaying next; I started with Outgunned: Superheroes which is a tailored version of the system built around the superhero genre. Having played the game engine back at North Star, I definitely want to get one of the Outgunned games to the table. I reviewed the first version here, and I think it's a game that will replace Savage Worlds for me as a go to action led system. I was mentally trying to build Marvel Defenders characters with this in my head, and then pondering doing a take of the fall of Carthage using superheroes rules (maybe a little like Eternals in principle).
After that, I read Midnight of the Century, a really interesting story game that is designed to a GM and one or two players. If you've seen the X-Files adjacent series Millennium, then you will immediately understand this game. The players are investigators in the Pacific Northwest of North America employed by a somewhat mysterious consultancy group to support the authorities investigating serial killers and occult adjacent deaths. Failure to solve the case will lead to some form of apocalyptic event, either local or more broadly. I found this intriguing and would like to run it at some point. I may do a more in-depth look at this later.
I then read Through the Hedgerow, one of the Osprey Games roleplaying games. This hooks into the British Fantasy vibe. I did find the typeface in the book a bit challenging to read at first but adapted to it. The characters are Briar Knights, fey and humans drawn from across different ages in Britain who cross through time representing the Light facing off against the Dark. I love the game idea but I found the rules poorly presented. I think that they are simple at heart, but the presentation uses lots of unnecessary acronyms and long winded terms that complicate the presentation. If I have a moment, I may well dive back into this and try and restate them in a clear and simple way on a cribsheet. As it stands, I liked this but it doesn't give me an urge to run. That may change if do the summary.
The final roleplaying game I read was Neon City Overdrive, which is a slick and fast cyberpunk game which feels a bit like an evolution of the dice mechanic in Blades in the Dark. Again, I was mentally trying to build characters I know from the genre like Molly, Case and Armitage from Neuromancer and it looked pretty simple to do (although they'd need to have more experience than a starting character to be realised). I'd originally planned to use this with the new Mothership book, Wages of Sin, for a scenario at Furnace, but have subsequently dropped that idea for reasons of simplicity (I'm running the same system three times).
On to fiction.
The first novel this month was Charles Cummings The Spanish Game, which is a sequel to A Spy by Nature and is set some years later when Alex Milius is living in exile in Spain, but ends up being drawn back into the world of espionage. A good book and I'm still not certain I like the protagonist. I'd happily read another if Cumming writes it.
After that I read Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, best described as a Mexican Noir, where a young woman finds that looking after a neighbour's cat draws her into a world of protest and politics in 1970s Mexico. I enjoyed this; it was pretty dark, but so was the time it describes where the government was carrying out political repression with the support of the USA.
After that, I indulged with a thriller from Nicci French, in which a woman who has suffered a mental breakdown is convinced her neighbour has been murdered, but no-one believes her. It has the same police detective - Maud O'Conner - as Has anyone seen Charlotte Salter? which I also enjoyed a lot. The Last Days of Kira Mullen is definitely worth a read and it was a page turner for me.
Next up was Derek B. Miller's The Girl in Green, which was set in the Middle East. It follows a journalist and a young soldier in Iraq who witness a brutal repression by the Iraqi state after the first Gulf War where they fail to save a girl dressed in green. Thirty years on, a video clip goes viral with another girl in green, a Syrian refugee, who is attacked at a checkpoint, and both protagonists are drawn back to find out what happened. This wonderfully written, with a sadness to it, but ultimately a story of hope.
Lives of Bitter Rain is a novella by Adrian Tchaikovsky set in The Tyrant Philospher's universe. It is a prequel to Days of Shattered Faith and tells the backstory of one of the protagonists, Angilly, in that story, leading me to like her even more. Handiwork Games are planning to release a roleplaying game in this setting, which could be quite interesting. I enjoyed this.
The next two books were both by John Marsden, and are a young adult fiction series - The Tomorrow Series - set in Australia where a group of young people have been camping in the bush over a holiday weekend only to find that the country has been invaded (it's never said by whom but everything points at China) and all their families have been taken prisoner. The stories, Tomorrow, When the War Began and The Dead of Night are done as journals by one of the protagonists, a late teens girl from a farming family called Ellie. They're quite gripping and fast to read (page counts in the high 200s) and as I write this I'm on the fifth of the seven books in the series. The story doesn't pull its punches, people get hurt and can die in this, and characters are confused teenagers who make mistakes that are all too human.
If I had to pull favourites from this list, it would be Derek B Miller's The Girl in Green for fiction and Rob Cowen's The North Road for non-fiction, with an honourable mention for Marsden's The Tomorrow Series. However, lots of books I enjoyed this month.
5 September 2026