Closed to Review Requests

In the interests of getting some long neglected projects done, I will no longer be accepting review requests for books.  I hope to review my remaining contracted books by the end of March.

What does this mean for the blog?  Trust me, I'll still be reading.  I have a stack of books I own that I haven't had time to read due to other reading commitments.  Here's a small sampling:

Dark Haven - Gail Martin
Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss
Time Traveler's Never Die - Jack McDevitt
Sasha - Joel Shepherd
Last Watch - Sergei Lukyanenko
Luck in the Shadows - Lynn Flewelling
Lament - Maggie Stiefvater
Plague War - Jeff Carlson

Then there are a few books coming out in April that I want to read immediately:

Element Zero - James Knapp
Eona - Alison Goodman
The Unremembered - Peter Orullian

There are the sequels to books I've enjoyed and haven't been able to pick up:

King of Crags - Stephen Deas
Fearscape - Simon Holt
Behemoth - Scott Westerfeld
Broken Kingdoms - N.K. Jemisin

And of course books that have intrigued me:

The Last Stormlord - Glenda Larke
The Cardinal's Blade - Pierre Pevel
The Drowning City - Amanda Downum
Geist - Philippa Ballantine
Crossfire - Miyuki Miyabe
Incarceron - Catherine Fisher

Then there are the books I want to reread.  I used to reread books a lot and had to stop once I started reviewing.  I didn't have time to spare reading books I'd read (and probably reviewed) before.  But I miss the practice, miss flipping through stories I know I love.  Like:

Transformation - Carol Berg
Son of Avonar - Carol Berg (if you haven't read her, I can't recommend her enough)
Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold
Resenting the Hero - Moira Moore
Mirror Prince - Violette Malan
Homeland - R. A. Salvatore
Elantris - Brandon Sanderson

There are more, of course, but thinking about them makes me want to pick them up right now and I still have other books to read first.

Needless to say, there will be reviews coming.  They may not be the newest books anymore, but I'm also hoping to vary my reading more again (get in some classics, more SF, a few urban fantasies) despite the high concentration of fantasy on this page.  I also suspect I'll be catching up on teen fiction, both because it's quick to read and because I like dystopian fiction (which seems to be a hot subgenre for them now).

It's also become apparent to me that I need a break from reviewing.  I couldn't read the last 2 books I picked up, despite their being interesting (one of them was The Windup Girl, which I've been looking forward to reading for months).  I'm simply burnt out at the moment and need some time to relax and read for fun before I can go back to the 'job'.  And no one wants a negative review simply because the reviewer is tired and cranky.

Any books I've agreed to review will still be reviewed and in a more timely manner.  If you send me a book I haven't requested or agreed to read, I'll put it under consideration but won't consider myself contracted to read it.

If you have a book coming that you want me to look at, you can still email me about it.  I'm going to take things at a slower pace but if your project interests me, I may pick it up on my own.  :)

And when I start accepting reviews again (the summer?  the fall?) I want to get back to my 2 weeks to review mode, rather than the month or two it's been the past few months due to volume.