This Ninja Book Swap has been anxiety filled for me, what with me running it for the first time. I’m so paranoid I messed up the matching or sent the wrong details to people, it’s been a huge relief to see the happy tweets and photos coming in. And it totally made my day when I received my parcel from the fantastic Jane, co-editor of Strange Horizons.

First off, I had to resist tearing into my gifts straight away as they were all labelled with a theme and I had to take a moment to get a photo before destroying it all in excitement.

Earth

I’m over the moon to receive the second book in N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. If you missed it, I read The Fifth Season last month and instantly fell in love. The Obelisk Gate is going straight to the top of my TBR.

Raging Seas

Hagseed is Margaret Atwood’s contribution to the Hogarth Shakespeare series where contemporary writers reimagine the plays. She takes on The Tempest and two of my colleagues have recently read this so it will great to be able to chat with them about it.

The Night Sky

I lovely fat quarter of night sky fabric! For those you that don’t know, I use fat quarters for most of my bookstagram photo backgrounds. I love being able to theme them to match the book and I also think rich blues work so well.

Air

I’ve tried the pink and orange versions of this generous Lush bubble bar before but not the blue one. It smells lovely and herbal so I look forward to some blue, bubbly baths in the near future.

Fire

A lovely little dragon pin holder. I thought it was a pin-free magnetic brooch at first, and it might work as that too, but actually a pin holder is useful as I just tend to jam my needles in my make-up bags and then stab myself later on.

Creatures Great & Small

Sloths and dinosaurs are the best! I love my set of sloth stickers.


There were also some sweeties and I’ve squirrelled away the paper rose in my bookstagram box of props. Thanks again Jane, I love it all.

I haven’t decided when the next swap will be (I’m definitely not running a Secret Santa one) but if you’d like to be kept informed, follow @ninjabookswap on Twitter and/or sign up to our newsletter.