The stunning finale to the Chronicles of the Bitch Queen trilogy where the queen of a divided land must unite her people against the enemies who threaten to tear her country apart. K. S. Villoso is a “powerful new voice in fantasy.” (Kameron Hurley)
Queen Talyien is finally home, but dangers she never imagined await her in the shadowed halls of her father’s castle.
War is on the horizon. Her son has been stolen from her, her warlords despise her, and across the sea, a cursed prince threatens her nation with invasion in order to win her hand.
Worse yet, her father’s ancient secrets are dangerous enough to bring Jin Sayeng to ruin. Dark magic tears rifts in the sky, preparing to rain down madness, chaos, and the possibility of setting her nation aflame.
Bearing the brunt of the past and uncertain about her future, Talyien will need to decide between fleeing her shadows or embracing them before the whole world becomes an inferno.
I received an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book from the publisher and Caffeine Book Tours as part of my participation in their tour. This has not affected my review. This review will contain spoilers for the first two books in the series, The Wolf of Oren-Yaro and The Ikessar Falcon.
Where do I even start with this epic of a book? I am raw after reading the final installment of the Chronicles of the Bitch Queen, that feeling you only ever get after reading the very best of books. My heart feels hollowed out and empty, my eyes stinging with tears at this ending, this ending that has ruined me. The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng was always going to be a difficult read, wrapping up the stories of characters we love and those we hate, and K.S. Villoso absolutely nailed it. This is one of the best finales I’ve ever read, and it will be for a very long time.
The last installment in this series is a book about monsters, about the impact our actions have even if we don’t intend it, about the harm inevitable when you have power over others, and about the people willing to suffer themselves so that others can live. We start immediately where we left off, in Jin-Sayeng where Tali awaits trial to prove whether her son’s father is the Crown Prince, Rayyel, or Agos, her lover and former guard. But with Yuebek now on their doorstep with an army in toe, a gash in the fabric of reality letting monsters through in the Sougen, and her son kidnapped, it’s safe to say Tali has far more important problems. We are taken on a huge journey as all of the plotlines begin to come together and huge machinations are revealed that bind everything together. There is something so so satisfying about the mysteries and puzzles of a mammoth fantasy series all coming together and making sense in the last book, and Villoso managed this absolutely perfectly and in a way that left me guessing all the way to the very last pages. I started this book with no idea how Tali was going to get out of this mess, and I felt that all the way to the very last pages. Villoso expertly managed to tie up what I wanted to see tied up, but left the ending open in such an honest way that I think really speaks to the messiness and trauma of living and trying to rebuild after a war.
This book is one about monsters, Tali even says so herself. It’s about the way society creates monsters, how people can be twisted to become a monster but also how those in power cannot be anything other. Throughout this trilogy I think we’ve seen this play out in front of us, seen how a person can be driven to monstrosity, both in Tali’s journey and in Khine’s, both who are driven to awful actions in this last book. Tali really confronts her own monstrosity in this book, and I found such a brilliant duality in the way we see her have to take terrible, terrible actions (I’d argue by far the worst we’ve seen across the trilogy) that affect the poorest and most marginalised the most, in her bid to save the country, but with her first person POV we get to see the other side of the coin as well. We see so closely into how much Tali suffers for Jin-Sayeng, we see how much she bleeds, we see those in power around her continue to ask for more and more and in spite of the cost, Tali suffers and bears the anger and guilt and horror of what is needed to unite a nation and destroy the monsters on their shore. Tali is a monster who was made: by her father, by those around her, by the very power she has as royalty, her monstrosity is inevitable and horrific and despite this, it is still necessary for the survival of Jin-Sayeng. I adored how Villoso explored this, the idea that impact is more important that intent. It doesn’t matter that Tali does not intend to hurt those around her, doesn’t mean to hurt the poorest in her community, but her role in this requires her to sacrifice for the greater good—what else could she have done? Tali is a true morally grey character and I think this book explores this aspect of her best out of the whole trilogy. I started the book completely convinced that Tali’s actions were justified, knowing what she trying to do, believing her intent was what mattered and it wasn’t her fault that some were hurt in the process. But The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng really makes you, as well as Tali, confront and examine that idea in such a deep and impactful way. What else could Tali have done? Should she have suffered to save her country, offered herself and her loved ones up as a lamb for slaughter to Yuebek? Would that even have saved her country, or merely delayed the inevitable? Should she have fought the past, fought those begging her to destroy herself for them, instead sacrificing the people around her, her country, the poorest and most vulnerable in society, for the chance she could save both her country and herself? There are no right answers, no easy answers to this question, and I loved how much this book made me think in trying to find answers for myself.
In fact, I adored how much my opinions of some characters changed throughout this book. In addition to my thoughts on Tali, I found my feelings for Rayyel took a complete U-turn! I started the book hating him, as I have for the first two, because he is a hypocritical arse. And then you find out something early on which makes you even more disgusted in him. But after the latter half of the book, how can you ever hate him? When you see what he goes through for Tali, for Jin-Sayeng, for his son? There are so many layers to every single one of these characters, with each subsequent book in the series my opinions have changed and developed as more and more is revealed. And it takes such skill to do this so expertly, to slowly reveal the many facets of these characters as if peeling back more and more of them every time.
One of my favourite things about Villoso’s writing is how sensuous it is – by which I mean Villoso is an author that makes use of the senses so much when writing. In such a close POV, we are pulled into this world by Villoso’s use of description. We see, hear, taste and smell everything Tali does and it makes for such an intimate story. From the very height of action in the midst of battles to the quiet moments between when Tali travels, Villoso uses the senses to envelop us in this world so we feel everything Tali does, from her fear to her peace. These moments of peace were really perfect as well. In such a confronting and traumatic story, these moments of peace and calm were so necessary to break between the terror and horror. And of course, Khine was at the centre of so many of these, his presence like a ray of sunshine through the darkness of this story. His hope and love just shines on the page and he remains my favourite character.
There is so much to wrap up in this book, so many different plots and threads to bring together, none more important than Tali’s son, who was kidnapped by Dai Kaggawa for leverage at the end of book 2. This is what makes The Chronicles of the Bitch Queen so fresh and unique for me: this entire series has been driven by the love Tali has for her son, and I really can’t think of a single other fantasy which does this. So often fantasy focuses on orphans, on absent parents or parents who weren’t there, and I find it so brilliantly wholesome and fresh to read a fantasy where the defining relationship, the one that drives the main character’s actions the whole way through, is the love a mother has for her son. Because of this, there is an inevitability to this book that stuns you. You can see what has to happen, for Tali to save her son, there is no question of whether she will do it, because it her son and she loves him beyond anything else. He is her weakness, she knows it, and she does not care. And so you can only read on in stunned silence as everything you feared has to come true, because Tali will do whatever it takes to save her son. It was so lovely to see her finally get some time on page with him, to see her joy at seeing him, it makes my soul hurt and eyes tear up just thinking about it again.
I feel like this getting to be an essay so I better try wrap this review up… I am in awe of what K.S Villoso has created with this series. It’s a story about monsters, power and the love a mother has for her son. It has one of the best characters in any fantasy in Queen Talyien, a morally grey character who must confront and accept her own monstrosity as the cost in order to save her son and country from even worse monsters. It is a journey of such epic proportions I will never be able to sum it all up in just one review, but suffice to say, I think it’s one of the best fantasy series I’ve ever read.
About the author
K.S. Villoso was born in a dank hospital on an afternoon in Albay, Philippines, and things have generally been okay since then. After spending most of her childhood in a slum area in Taguig (where she dodged death-defying traffic, ate questionable food, and fell into open-pit sewers more often than one ought to), she and her family immigrated to Vancouver, Canada, where they spent the better part of two decades trying to chase the North American Dream. She is now living amidst the forest and mountains with her family, children, and dogs in Anmore, BC.
About the blog tour
Please check out the rest of the amazing bloggers involved in the blog tour over the next two weeks! You can find the full schedule here! There is also a HUGE giveaway as part of the tour, and I highly encourage you to enter so you can win copies of this amazing series!
The prize is The Literary Culture’s Revenge of the Bitch Queen collection (inclusive of exclusive tapestry, book sleeve, and merchandise inspired by the series). There will also be TWO winners, one from the Phillipines and one international. You can enter the giveaway here!
Yes you read that right, my blog is back! After a few months break where I didn’t really rest at all, I have decided to get back to my blog. However, I will definitely be taking it a little more slowly this time and so hopefully things will be a bit more relaxed so I’m not stressing to get 3-4 posts up every single week, which is what I was doing previously.
My first post back is one I’ve been so excited for since I started writing it before my break. I have been loving horror so much recently, and there are a lot of really amazing horror books coming this year and I wanted to talk about them all! I take a fairly loose definition of horror, so expect to see lots of variety here, from gothic fantasy to thriller to paranormal to dystopias, all with a horror twist!
Let’s start with what is quite possibly my most anticipated horror book of the year! (Or maybe joint most anticipated with YA horror The Taking of Jake Livingston, which you can find out about later in the post!) This gorgeous cover was just recently revealed as well, and look how chilling and gothic it looks?!? Summer Sons is a queer Southern gothic novel mixed up with a Fast and Furious movie, and follows a man whose best friend commits suicide and leaves him with a gruesome phantom with bleeding wrists that keeps speaking of revenge. (September 28)
Andrew and Eddie did everything together, best friends bonded more deeply than brothers, until Eddie left Andrew behind to start his graduate program at Vanderbilt. Six month later, only days before Andrew was to join him in Nashville, Eddie dies of an apparent suicide. He leaves Andrew a horrible inheritance: a roommate he doesn’t know, friends he never asked for, and a gruesome phantom with bleeding wrists that mutters of revenge.
As Andrew searches for the truth of Eddie’s death, he uncovers the lies and secrets left behind by the person he trusted most, discovering a family history soaked in blood and death. Whirling between the backstabbing academic world where Eddie spent his days and the circle of hot boys, fast cars, and hard drugs that ruled Eddie’s nights, the walls Andrew has built against the world begin to crumble, letting in the phantom that hungers for him.
Another absolutely stunningly creepy cover from Tor Nightfire! This sounds like such a creepy book, based on Japanese folklore and set in an unsettling house which stands on the bones of a bride and has walls packed with remains of girls who were sacrificed to keep her company. AMAZING RIGHT?! (October 19)
Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a gorgeously creepy haunted house tale, steeped in Japanese folklore and full of devastating twists.
A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundations resting on the bones of a bride and its walls packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company.
It’s the perfect wedding venue for a group of thrill-seeking friends.
But a night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare. For lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia has THREE, yes, THREE book releases this year. Certain Dark Things is a rerelease of her vampire novel, Tor are blessing us by bringing it back in a new edition. And I can’t express how excited I am to see a vampire novel set in Mexico from the author of my favourite book of 2020, Mexican Gothic. (September 7)
From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a pulse-pounding neo-noir that reimagines vampire lore.
Welcome to Mexico City, an oasis in a sea of vampires. Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, is just trying to survive its heavily policed streets when a jaded vampire on the run swoops into his life. Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, is smart, beautiful, and dangerous. Domingo is mesmerized.
Atl needs to quickly escape the city, far from the rival narco-vampire clan relentlessly pursuing her. Her plan doesn’t include Domingo, but little by little, Atl finds herself warming up to the scrappy young man and his undeniable charm. As the trail of corpses stretches behind her, local cops and crime bosses both start closing in.
Vampires, humans, cops, and criminals collide in the dark streets of Mexico City. Do Atl and Domingo even stand a chance of making it out alive? Or will the city devour them all?
Continuing on with the year of the return of the vampire, The Route of Ice and Salt is a translated Dracula retelling, published by Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s mini-press. It’s a reimagining of Dracula’s voyage to England, and follows the captain of the ship bringing him to England as he begins to sense that someone is stalking his ship at night. (January 19)
A reimagining of Dracula’s voyage to England, filled with Gothic imagery and queer desire.
It’s an ordinary assignment, nothing more. The cargo? Fifty boxes filled with Transylvanian soil. The route? From Varna to Whitby. The Demeter has made many trips like this. The captain has handled dozens of crews.
He dreams familiar dreams: to taste the salt on the skin of his men, to run his hands across their chests. He longs for the warmth of a lover he cannot have, fantasizes about flesh and frenzied embraces. All this he’s done before, it’s routine, a constant, like the tides.
Yet there’s something different, something wrong. There are odd nightmares, unsettling omens and fear. For there is something in the air, something in the night, someone stalking the ship.
The cult vampire novella by Mexican author José Luis Zárate is available for the first time in English. Translated by David Bowles and with an accompanying essay by noted horror author Poppy Z. Brite, it reveals an unknown corner of Latin American literature.
Next on the vampire trend, this time we have a retelling of Dracula’s brides in a queer, poly masterpiece, A Dowry of Blood. I’ve read this absolute stunning novel (you can read my review here!) and it is hard to put into words how much I adored this. It’s so rich and decadent with absolutely beautiful prose and is such a brilliant examination of trauma and abuse. (January 31)
A lyrical and dreamy reimagining of Dracula’s brides, A DOWRY OF BLOOD is a story of desire, obsession, and emancipation.
Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant into a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things. Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband’s dark secrets.
With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. But bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death.
YES, we have more vampires in 2021!! Can we talk for a minute about how all of these vampire novels are either by authors of colour or queer authors or both? White, cishet vampires are DEAD and they are being resurrected a million times better by marginalised authors! The Blood Prince of Langkasuka is a reimagining of the Raja Bersiong legend, a Malaysian coming-of-age story about a young prince who is turned into a vampire. (February 1)
The monster is not always who you expect it to be… a reimagining of the Raja Bersiong legend; a coming-of-age story of an angst-ridden young man turning into a vampire, while confronted with a chilling murder-mystery.
Raja Perita Deria is a carefree and arrogant seventeen-year-old; and his story begins with a seemingly ordinary night out with his close friends. However, a chance encounter with a bewitchingly beautiful woman in an abandoned temple, almost ends his life and changes him irrevocably. After an incident involving the cook and a dish of bayam tainted with blood, he discovers that he needs blood to heal and for sustenance. As heir to the throne of Langkasuka, the prince is also caught in the larger political struggle surrounding the kingdom which is being watched by the two powers of 12th Century Southeast Asia – the Sri Vijaya Empire and the Khmer Empire. Sri Vijaya courts Langkasuka by offering the prince, the hand of a Sri Vijayan princess, while the Khmer Empire seems curiously aloof. To everyone’s surprise, Raja Perita is drawn to the princess, and agrees to marry her. However, a spate of violent deaths in the palace of Langkasuka point towards the prince and his close friends and Raja Perita is slowly driven to breaking point. When the most powerful shaman in the kingdom is murdered while attempting to commune with the Rice Spirit, the countryside is in an uproar. Her death sets off a witch hunt for a killer who could be a vampire… Could it be one of the prince’s beloved friends, or perhaps Raja Perita himself?
STILL NOT DONE with the 2021 vampires!! Walk Among Us is a trio of three horror novellas set in the world of the role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade (which is also getting a new video game coming this year too if you’re interested, with Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2). This is also an audio-first collection which is very exciting! (June 16)
One of the most popular role-playing properties in the world gets new life with this trio of horror novellas set in Vampire: The Masquerade‘s World of Darkness by three brilliant talents: Genevieve Gornichec, Cassandra Khaw, and Caitlin Starling
The subtle horror and infernal politics of the World of Darkness are shown in a new light in Vampire: The Masquerade: Walk Among Us, an audio-first collection of three novellas that show the terror, hunger, and power of the Kindred as you’ve never seen them before.
In Genevieve Gornichec’s A SHEEP AMONG WOLVES, performed by Erika Ishii, depression and radicalization go hand-in-hand as a young woman finds companionship in the darkness…
In Cassandra Khaw’s FINE PRINT, performed by Neil Kaplan, an arrogant tech bro learns the importance of reading the fine print in the contract for immortality…
And in Caitlin Starling’s LAND OF MILK AND HONEY, performed by Xe Sands, ideals and ethics bump heads with appetite on a blood farm.
Three very different stories from three amazing, distinct voices, but all with one thing in common: the hunger never stops, and for someone to experience power, many others are going to have to feel pain.
Ahem. A government of nuns who engage in ritualistic cannibalism? And sexually transmitted zombieism? And a group of bisexual disasters? Sign me the fuck up immediately!!! God, everything about this book sounds fucked up and messy and absolutely amazing. (June 22)
All martyrdoms are difficult.
Elfreda Raughn will avoid pregnancy if it kills her, and one way or another, it will kill her. Though she’s able to stomach her gruesome day-to-day duties, the reality of preserving the Sisterhood of Aytrium’s magical bloodline horrifies her. She wants out, whatever the cost.
So when a shadowy cabal approaches Elfreda with an offer of escape, she leaps at the opportunity. As their spy, she gains access to the highest reaches of the Sisterhood, and enters a glittering world of opulent parties, subtle deceptions, and unexpected bloodshed.
A phantasmagorical indictment of hereditary power, Star Eater takes readers deep into a perilous and uncanny world where even the most powerful women are forced to choose what sacrifices they will make, so that they might have any choice at all.
Caitlin Starling is the author of one of my favourite horror books, The Luminous Dead! In 2021, she is back with another gothic horror (with an absolutely terrifyingly creepy cover – look at the way the thread is sewed into the skin!!!). The Death of Jane Lawrence, inspired by Crimson Peak, is about a marriage of convenience and 1800s surgical practices (which means lots of fucked up shit I assume!) (October 19)
Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations, and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town. Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed. Gone is the bold, courageous surgeon, and in his place is a terrified, paranoid man—one who cannot tell reality from nightmare, and fears Jane is an apparition, come to haunt him.
By morning, Augustine is himself again, but Jane knows something is deeply wrong at Lindridge Hall, and with the man she has so hastily bound her safety to. Set in a dark-mirror version of post-war England, Starling crafts a new kind of gothic horror from the bones of the beloved canon. This Crimson Peak-inspired story assembles, then upends, every expectation set in place by Shirley Jackson and Rebecca, and will leave readers shaken, desperate to begin again as soon as they are finished.
A combination of a horror novel and book publishing? WHAT A DELIGHT. The Other Black Girl is described as Get Out meets The Devil Wears Prada which sounds so fantastic I can’t even express it in words. It follows a Black publishing employee who begins to receive threatening notes demanding she leave the company. (June 1)
Get Outmeets The Devil Wears Pradain this electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing.
Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust.
Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW.
It’s hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just her career.
A whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary that is perfect for anyone who has ever felt manipulated, threatened, or overlooked in the workplace, The Other Black Girl will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last twist.
From one of the most exciting voices in SFF, behind the The Deep and The Unkindness of Ghosts, is a new genre-bending novel, Sorrowland. Horror novels have really got the best covers in 2021!! Sorrowland is about a pregnant woman who escapes a cult and gives birth to twins in the woods. But then, her body begins to change and she can unleash brutality far beyond what a human should be able to do. (May 4)
A triumphant, genre-bending breakout novel from one of the boldest new voices in contemporary fiction
Vern – seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised – flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world.
But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.
To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troublingly, the future – outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history in America that produced it.
Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland is a genre-bending work of Gothic fiction. Here, monsters aren’t just individuals, but entire nations. It is a searing, seminal book that marks the arrival of a bold, unignorable voice in American fiction.
I’m pretty sure I first saw this book after one of my favourite authors, Victoria Lee, tweeted about how awesome it was (although I can no longer actually find that tweet so who knows if I just imagined that!) But, I know it’s going to be incredible! It’s about a serial killer and a girl who grows up in the wake of her sister’s disappearance and moves into a house next to who she suspects was the murderer to watch him. (September 28)
This is the story of a serial killer. A stolen child. Revenge. Death. And an ordinary house at the end of an ordinary street.
All these things are true. And yet they are all lies…
You think you know what’s inside the last house on Needless Street. You think you’ve read this story before. That’s where you’re wrong.
In the dark forest at the end of Needless Street, lies something buried. But it’s not what you think…
Stephen Graham Jones is one of the best authors in horror right now, and as I’m writing this post, I’m currently reading The Only Good Indians, a creepy, gorey horror novel about a group of Blackfeet men who are haunted by an elk they killed a decade ago. His next novel, My Heart is a Chainsaw, follows a half-Indian woman obsessed with horror movies who is convinced her own town is living through it’s own horror movie. (August 31)
In her quickly gentrifying rural lake town Jade sees recent events only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films could have prepared her for in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones.
“Some girls just don’t know how to die…”
Shirley Jackson meets Friday the 13th in My Heart Is a Chainsaw, written by the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians Stephen Graham Jones, called “a literary master” by National Book Award winner Tananarive Due and “one of our most talented living writers” by Tommy Orange.
Alma Katsu calls My Heart Is a Chainsaw “a homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre.” On the surface is a story of murder in small-town America. But beneath is its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, and a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life.
Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies…especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.
Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges…a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph.
When the Reckoning Comes sounds like it will be a really rough, but necessary, read, tackling one of contemporary America’s truly horrific ideas: plantation weddings. The book is set during a plantation wedding, on a plantation haunted by the spirits of slaves. (August 3)
A haunting novel about a black woman who returns to her hometown for a plantation wedding and the horror that ensues as she reconnects with the blood-soaked history of the land and the best friends she left behind.
More than a decade ago, Mira fled her small, segregated hometown in the south to forget. With every mile she traveled, she distanced herself from her past: from her best friend Celine, mocked by their town as the only white girl with black friends; from her old neighborhood; from the eerie Woodsman plantation rumored to be haunted by the spirits of slaves; from the terrifying memory of a ghost she saw that terrible day when a dare-gone-wrong almost got Jesse—the boy she secretly loved—arrested for murder.
But now Mira is back in Kipsen to attend Celine’s wedding at the plantation, which has been transformed into a lush vacation resort. Mira hopes to reconnect with her friends, and especially, Jesse, to finally tell him the truth about her feelings and the events of that devastating long-ago day.
But for all its fancy renovations, the Woodsman remains a monument to its oppressive racist history. The bar serves antebellum drinks, entertainments include horrifying reenactments, and the service staff is nearly all black. Yet the darkest elements of the plantation’s past have been carefully erased—rumors that slaves were tortured mercilessly and that ghosts roam the lands, seeking vengeance on the descendants of those who tormented them, which includes most of the wedding guests.
As the weekend unfolds, Mira, Jesse, and Celine are forced to acknowledge their history together, and to save themselves from what is to come.
Possession novella but make it possession by an ancient Aztec goddess thirsting for sins?! Yes please. (March 30)
“Five of us sat in a circle doing our best to emulate the girls in The Craft, hoping to unleash some power to take us all away from our home to the place of our dreams. But we weren’t witches. We were five Chicanas living in San Antonio, Texas, one year out of high school.”
One hot summer night, best friends Lourdes, Fernanda, Ana, Perla, and Pauline hold a séance. It’s all fun and games at first, but their tipsy laughter turns to terror when the flames burn straight through their prayer candles and Fernanda starts crawling toward her friends and chanting in Nahuatl, the language of their Aztec ancestors.
Over the next few weeks, shy, modest Fernanda starts acting strangely—smearing herself in black makeup, shredding her hands on rose thorns, sucking sin out of the mouths of the guilty. The local priest is convinced it’s a demon, but Lourdes begins to suspect it’s something else—something far more ancient and powerful.
As Father Moreno’s obsession with Fernanda grows, Lourdes enlists the help of her “bruja Craft crew” and a professor, Dr. Camacho, to understand what is happening to her friend in this unholy tale of possession-gone-right.
I love books with odd Victorian professions and this one follows a silhouette artist whose clients keep being murdered, so she goes to a spirit medium to try contact the dead to find out who killed them. (January 21)
As the age of the photograph dawns in Victorian Bath, silhouette artist Agnes is struggling to keep her business afloat. Still recovering from a serious illness herself, making enough money to support her elderly mother and her orphaned nephew Cedric has never been easy, but then one of her clients is murdered shortly after sitting for Agnes, and then another, and another… Why is the killer seemingly targeting her business?
Desperately seeking an answer, Agnes approaches Pearl, a child spirit medium lodging in Bath with her older half-sister and her ailing father, hoping that if Pearl can make contact with those who died, they might reveal who killed them.
But Agnes and Pearl quickly discover that instead they may have opened the door to something that they can never put back…
The combination of horror with pregnancy and motherhood is always such an interesting and captivating combination. And I’m sure The Upstairs House is going to continue that trend! This is described as Shirley Jackson meets The Awakening about a woman who has recently given birth and is left alone with the newborn when her husband travels for work. She begins to see the ghost of a children’s book author whose entwined in a power struggle with the ghost of her former lover. (February 23)
A provocative meditation on new motherhood—Shirley Jackson meets The Awakening—in which a postpartum woman’s psychological unraveling becomes intertwined with the ghostly appearance of children’s book writer Margaret Wise Brown.
There’s a madwoman upstairs, and only Megan Weiler can see her.
Ravaged and sore from giving birth to her first child, Megan is mostly raising her newborn alone while her husband travels for work. Physically exhausted and mentally drained, she’s also wracked with guilt over her unfinished dissertation—a thesis on mid-century children’s literature.
Enter a new upstairs neighbor: the ghost of quixotic children’s book writer Margaret Wise Brown—author of the beloved classic Goodnight Moon—whose existence no one else will acknowledge. It seems Margaret has unfinished business with her former lover, the once-famous socialite and actress Michael Strange, and is determined to draw Megan into the fray. As Michael joins the haunting, Megan finds herself caught in the wake of a supernatural power struggle—and until she can find a way to quiet these spirits, she and her newborn daughter are in terrible danger.
A serial killer horror novel is always a terrifying ordeal, but this one sounds more interesting than most as it’s about one of the most prolific female serial killers in America’s history, the Widow of La Porte! (January 19)
An audacious novel of feminine rage about one of the most prolific female serial killers in American history–and the men who drove her to it.
They whisper about her in Chicago. Men come to her with their hopes, their dreams–their fortunes. But no one sees them leave. No one sees them at all after they come to call on the Widow of La Porte. The good people of Indiana may have their suspicions, but if those fools knew what she’d given up, what was taken from her, how she’d suffered, surely they’d understand. Belle Gunness learned a long time ago that a woman has to make her own way in this world. That’s all it is. A bloody means to an end. A glorious enterprise meant to raise her from the bleak, colorless drudgery of her childhood to the life she deserves. After all, vermin always survive.
I really enjoyed Kali Wallace’s 2020 horror, Salvation Day, which was a space horror set on an abandoned spaceship. In her next space thriller/horror, Dead Space, we follow an investigator who survived a terrorist attack and must now solve the murder on an asteroid mine of a fellow survivor of the attack, as well as discovering the truth behind the attack itself. (March 2)
An investigator must solve a brutal murder on a claustrophobic asteroid mine in this tense science fiction thriller from the author of Salvation Day.
Hester Marley used to have a plan for her life. But when a catastrophic attack left her injured, indebted, and stranded far from home, she was forced to take a dead-end security job with a powerful mining company in the asteroid belt. Now she spends her days investigating petty crimes to help her employer maximize its profits. She’s surprised to hear from an old friend and fellow victim of the terrorist attack that ruined her life–and that surprise quickly turns to suspicion when he claims to have discovered something shocking about their shared history and the tragedy that neither of them can leave behind.
Before Hester can learn more, her friend is violently murdered at a remote asteroid mine. Hester joins the investigation to find the truth, both about her friend’s death and the information he believed he had uncovered. But catching a killer is only the beginning of Hester’s worries, and she soon realizes that everything she learns about her friend, his fellow miners, and the outpost they call home brings her closer to revealing secrets that very powerful and very dangerous people would rather keep hidden in the depths of space.
Getaway sound’s like it’ll have the same claustrophobic tension as one of my favourite horror novels, The Luminous Dead, but instead of being set in a space caving system, it’s set in the Grand Canyon, and follows a group of friends on a hike as their supplies start dissappearing… (August 17)
It was supposed to be the perfect week away…
Imogen and Beck, two sisters who couldn’t be more different, have been friends with Tilda since high school. Once inseparable, over two decades the women have grown apart. But after Imogen survives a traumatic attack, Beck suggests they all reunite to hike deep into the Grand Canyon’s backcountry. A week away, secluded in nature . . . surely it’s just what they need.
But as the terrain grows tougher, tensions from their shared past bubble up. And when supplies begin to disappear, it becomes clear secrets aren’t the only thing they’re being stalked by. As friendship and survival collide with an unspeakable evil, Getaway becomes another riveting thriller from a growing master of suspense and “a literary horror writer on the rise”.
I really enjoyed Helen Oyeyemi’s book White is for Witching last year, so I’m keen to explore more of her work, and luckily, she’s got a new book coming in 2021! Peaces is set on a mysterious sleeper train, and has a PET MONGOOSE. Say no more, I shall read it for the mongoose. (April 6)
The prize-winning, bestselling author of Gingerbread; Boy, Snow, Bird; and What Is Not Yours Is NotYours returns with a vivid and inventive new novel about a couple forever changed by an unusual train voyage.
When Otto and Xavier Shin declare their love, an aunt gifts them a trip on a sleeper train to mark their new commitment–and to get them out of her house. Setting off with their pet mongoose, Otto and Xavier arrive at their sleepy local train station, but quickly deduce that The Lucky Day is no ordinary locomotive. Their trip on this former tea-smuggling train has been curated beyond their wildest imaginations, complete with mysterious and welcoming touches, like ingredients for their favorite breakfast. They seem to be the only people onboard, until Otto discovers a secretive woman who issues a surprising message. As further clues and questions pile up, and the trip upends everything they thought they knew, Otto and Xavier begin to see connections to their own pasts, connections that now bind them together.
A spellbinding tale from a star author, Peaces is about what it means to be seen by another person–whether it’s your lover or a stranger on a train–and what happens when things you thought were firmly in the past turn out to be right beside you.
Another rerelease, this horror novella is set in a world where people shed their skins every 7 years, and change everything about you, from your life, who you love, and who you are. Sounds creepy, right?! (February 23)
A gripping and strange story of shedding skins, love and moving on from the award-winning author of The Beauty. Includes an exclusive short story set in the world of The Loosening Skin.
Rose Allington is a bodyguard for celebrities, and she suffers from a rare disease. Her moults come quickly, changing everything about her life, who she is, who she loves, who she trusts.
In a world where people shed their skin, it’s a fact of life that we move on and cast off the attachments of our old life. But those memories of love can be touched – and bought – if you know the right people.
Rose’s former client, superstar actor Max Black, is hooked on Suscutin, a new wonderdrug that prevents the moult. Max knows his skins are priceless, and moulting could cost him his career.
When one of his skins is stolen, and the theft is an inside job, Max needs the best who ever worked for him – even if she’s not the same person.
I love this book already because it it has The Blair Witch Project as a comp, which has a special place in my heart as the only horror movie I could ever get through as a teen! Because I was (and still am) a wimp when it comes to horror films. Thus, I’m very interested in The Lost Village which follows a documentary filmaker who is obsessed with an old mining town where people keep vanishing. Obviously, she decides to make a film and EVERYTHING GOES WRONG *evil laughter* (March 23)
The Blair Witch Project meets Midsommar in this brilliantly disturbing thriller from Camilla Sten, an electrifying new voice in suspense.
Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of the old mining town, dubbed “The Lost Village,” since she was a little girl. In 1959, her grandmother’s entire family disappeared in this mysterious tragedy, and ever since, the unanswered questions surrounding the only two people who were left—a woman stoned to death in the town center and an abandoned newborn—have plagued her. She’s gathered a small crew of friends in the remote village to make a film about what really happened.
But there will be no turning back.
Not long after they’ve set up camp, mysterious things begin to happen. Equipment is destroyed. People go missing. As doubt breeds fear and their very minds begin to crack, one thing becomes startlingly clear to Alice:
They are not alone.
They’re looking for the truth… But what if it finds them first?
Christina Henry is known for her horror retellings of fairytales, from Peter Pan to Alice in Wonderland to Red Riding Hood. This year, she has a new horror book about monsters on a mountain and the woman trying to survive them. (April 13)
A woman trapped on a mountain attempts to survive more than one kind of monster, in a dread-inducing horror novel from the national bestselling author Christina Henry.
Mattie can’t remember a time before she and William lived alone on a mountain together. She must never make him upset. But when Mattie discovers the mutilated body of a fox in the woods, she realizes that they’re not alone after all.
There’s something in the woods that wasn’t there before, something that makes strange cries in the night, something with sharp teeth and claws.
When three strangers appear on the mountaintop looking for the creature in the woods, Mattie knows their presence will anger William. Terrible things happen when William is angry.
Mona Awad is the brain behind the weird and wonderful Bunny, and her next novel looks to be just as strange and dark and disturbing. It follows a theatre professor with chronic pain on the verge of losing her job and explores the way female pain and trauma is invalidated by society. (August 3)
From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny, a darkly funny novel about a theater professor suffering chronic pain, who in the process of staging a troubled production of Shakespeare’s most maligned play, suddenly and miraculously recovers.
Miranda Fitch’s life is a waking nightmare. The accident that ended her burgeoning acting career left her with excruciating, chronic back pain, a failed marriage, and a deepening dependence on painkillers. And now she’s on the verge of losing her job as a college theater director. Determined to put on Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, the play that promised, and cost, her everything, she faces a mutinous cast hellbent on staging Macbeth instead. Miranda sees her chance at redemption slip through her fingers.
That’s when she meets three strange benefactors who have an eerie knowledge of Miranda’s past and a tantalizing promise for her future: one where the show goes on, her rebellious students get what’s coming to them, and the invisible, doubted pain that’s kept her from the spotlight is made known.
With prose Margaret Atwood has described as “no punches pulled, no hilarities dodged…genius,” Mona Awad has concocted her most potent, subversive novel yet. All’s Well is the story of a woman at her breaking point and a formidable, piercingly funny indictment of our collective refusal to witness and believe female pain.
This sounds like such an interesting exploration of the relationship between horror and queerness, following the Toronto queer community across the decades as gay men keep vanishing. Until the community realises that whoever or whatever is taking the men has been doing so for longer than humanly possible. (August 31)
A hunted community. A haunted author. A horror that spans centuries.
Men are disappearing from Toronto’s gay village. They’re the marginalized, the vulnerable. One by one, stalked and vanished, they leave behind small circles of baffled, frightened friends. Against the shifting backdrop of homophobia throughout the decades, from the HIV/AIDS crisis and riots against raids to gentrification and police brutality, the survivors face inaction from the law and disinterest from society at large. But as the missing grow in number, those left behind begin to realize that whoever or whatever is taking these men has been doing so for longer than is humanly possible.
Woven into their stories is David Demchuk’s own personal history, a life lived in fear and in thrall to horror, a passion that boils over into obsession. As he tries to make sense of the relationship between queerness and horror, what it means for gay men to disappear, and how the isolation of the LGBTQ+ community has left them profoundly exposed to monsters that move easily among them, fact and fiction collide and reality begins to unravel.
First of all, how gorgeous is this cover?! Second of all, this is Gone Girl x Spinning Silver?! How amazing does that sound?! This thriller novella follows Sophia, and her strange husband who works too hard, doesn’t answer her questions and keeps a basement locked where she isn’t allowed to enter. (October 26)
A terrifying new thriller from bestseller Catherynne M. Valente, for fans of Gone Girl and Spinning Silver
Sophia was made for him. Her perfect husband. She can feel it in her bones. He is perfect. Their home together in Arcadia Gardens is perfect. Everything is perfect.
It’s just that he’s away so much. So often. He works so hard. She misses him. And he misses her. He says he does, so it must be true. He is the perfect husband and everything is perfect.
But sometimes Sophia wonders about things. Strange things. Dark things. The look on her husband’s face when he comes back from a long business trip. The questions he will not answer. The locked basement she is never allowed to enter. And whenever she asks the neighbors, they can’t quite meet her gaze…
As always, Tordotcom Publishing is absolutely killing it with novellas. Flowers for the Sea is described as a gothic Rosemary’s Baby meets Octavia Butler, which sounds epic?! It follows refugees from a flooded kingdom, one of whom is pregnant with a child that might not be human. (September 19)
Flowers for the Sea is a dark, dazzling debut novella from Zin E. Rocklyn that reads like Rosemary’s Baby by way of Octavia E. Butler
We are a people who do not forget.
Survivors from a flooded kingdom struggle alone on an ark. Resources are scant, and ravenous beasts circle. Their fangs are sharp.
Among the refugees is Iraxi: ostracized, despised, and a commoner who refused a prince, she’s pregnant with a child that might be more than human. Her fate may be darker and more powerful than she can imagine.
Zin E. Rocklyn’s extraordinary debut novella is a lush, gothic fantasy about the prices we pay and the vengeance we seek.
Well this just sounds bloody incredible! A queer and trans, genre-bending coming-of-age story about a 90s girl group mystery series set at a haunted eating disorder treatment centre in a dystopian, mutant world?! What the fuck but also this sounds amazing?! (Date unconfirmed)
Lambda-nominated writer and critic Megan Milks’s MARGARET AND THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING BODY, a genre-bending queer and trans coming-of-age story that combines a ’90s-era girl group mystery series with a haunted eating disorder treatment center and a surreal mutant body-world.
We don’t know much about The Women Could Fly yet, but what we do know is this:
a) Megan Giddings had a phenomenal horror debut with her book exploring medical experimentation on Black people in Lakewood
b) the one description I’ve found for The Women Could Fly sounds epic: pitched as reminiscent of Kelly Link and Ottessa Moshfegh, about a Black, bisexual woman on a journey to come to terms with the loss of her mother, who disappeared mysteriously when she was a teenager, and set in a world where witches are real (Date unconfirmed)
Victoria Lee is the author of my favourite book, The Fever King, so of course I am INORDINATELY excited for her next DARK ACADEMIA, SAPPHIC THRILLER. It’s going to be so fucking good, I already know it. (August 3)
For fans of Wilder Girls and Ninth House comes a dark, twisty, atmospheric thriller about a boarding school haunted by its history of witchcraft and two girls dangerously close to digging up the past.
Felicity Morrow is back at Dalloway School.
Perched in the Catskill mountains, the centuries-old, ivy-covered campus was home until the tragic death of her girlfriend. Now, after a year away, she’s returned to graduate. She even has her old room in Godwin House, the exclusive dormitory rumored to be haunted by the spirits of five Dalloway students—girls some say were witches. The Dalloway Five all died mysteriously, one after another, right on Godwin grounds.
Witchcraft is woven into Dalloway’s history. The school doesn’t talk about it, but the students do. In secret rooms and shadowy corners, girls convene. And before her girlfriend died, Felicity was drawn to the dark. She’s determined to leave that behind her now; all Felicity wants is to focus on her senior thesis and graduate. But it’s hard when Dalloway’s occult history is everywhere. And when the new girl won’t let her forget.
It’s Ellis Haley’s first year at Dalloway, and she’s already amassed a loyal following. A prodigy novelist at seventeen, Ellis is a so-called “method writer.” She’s eccentric and brilliant, and Felicity can’t shake the pull she feels to her. So when Ellis asks Felicity for help researching the Dalloway Five for her second book, Felicity can’t say no. Given her history with the arcane, Felicity is the perfect resource.
And when history begins to repeat itself, Felicity will have to face the darkness in Dalloway–and in herself.
This is my joint most anticipated YA horror book of the year (along with the above Victoria Lee book). Just look how creepy that cover is!! This follows a boy called Jake who starts getting haunted by the ghost of a school shooter. (July 13)
Get Out meets Danielle Vega in this YA horror where survival is not a guarantee.
Jake Livingston is one of the only Black kids at St. Clair Prep, one of the others being his infinitely more popular older brother. It’s hard enough fitting in but to make matters worse and definitely more complicated, Jake can see the dead. In fact he sees the dead around him all the time. Most are harmless. Stuck in their death loops as they relive their deaths over and over again, they don’t interact often with people. But then Jake meets Sawyer. A troubled teen who shot and killed six kids at a local high school last year before taking his own life. Now a powerful, vengeful ghost, he has plans for his afterlife–plans that include Jake. Suddenly, everything Jake knows about ghosts and the rules to life itself go out the window as Sawyer begins haunting him and bodies turn up in his neighborhood. High school soon becomes a survival game–one Jake is not sure he’s going to win.
This is the first darker retelling of Peter Pan, by two of the best writers in YA this year! K. Ancrum is one of my auto-buy authors, I do not care what she writes, I WILL READ IT. And I just can’t wait to read this really dark Peter Pan thriller, reimagined to be set in today’s world. (June 22)
A teen girl finds herself lost on a dangerous adventure in this YA thriller by the acclaimed author of The Wicker King and The Weight of the Stars—reimagining Peter Pan for today’s world.
On Wendy Darling’s first night in Chicago, a boy called Peter appears at her window. He’s dizzying, captivating, beautiful—so she agrees to join him for a night on the town.
Wendy thinks they’re heading to a party, but instead they’re soon running in the city’s underground. She makes friends—a punk girl named Tinkerbelle and the lost boys Peter watches over. And she makes enemies—the terrifying Detective Hook, and maybe Peter himself, as his sinister secrets start coming to light. Can Wendy find the courage to survive this night—and make sure everyone else does, too?
Acclaimed author K. Ancrum has re-envisioned Peter Pan with a central twist that will send all your previous memories of J. M. Barrie’s classic permanently off to Neverland.
And onto the SECOND dark Peter Pan retelling, we are blessed this year! What a gorgeous cover too, the colouring is so, so pretty. This Peter Pan retelling follows Wendy years after her and her brothers went missing in the woods, and now other children are starting to disappear. (March 23)
When children go missing in the small coastal town of Astoria, people look to Wendy for answers.
It’s been five years since Wendy and her two brothers went missing in the woods, but when the town’s children start to disappear, the questions surrounding her brothers’ mysterious circumstances are brought back into light. Attempting to flee her past, Wendy almost runs over an unconscious boy lying in the middle of the road, and gets pulled into the mystery haunting the town.
Peter, a boy she thought lived only in her stories, claims that if they don’t do something, the missing children will meet the same fate as her brothers. In order to find them and rescue the missing kids, Wendy must confront what’s waiting for her in the woods.
Gothic books are one of my favourite genres and so I loved this dark gothic fantasy when I read an ARC earlier this year (and I will have a review coming very soon now that my blog is up and running again!) It also has body horror (EYE HORROR specifically), medical magic, a bisexual heroine, a creepy, chilling castle and a gorgeous enemies to lovers relationship. (March 2)
He saw the darkness in her magic. She saw the magic in his darkness.
Wren Southerland’s reckless use of magic has cost her everything: she’s been dismissed from the Queen’s Guard and separated from her best friend—the girl she loves. So when a letter arrives from a reclusive lord, asking Wren to come to his estate, Colwick Hall, to cure his servant from a mysterious illness, she seizes her chance to redeem herself.
The mansion is crumbling, icy winds haunt the caved-in halls, and her eccentric host forbids her from leaving her room after dark. Worse, Wren’s patient isn’t a servant at all but Hal Cavendish, the infamous Reaper of Vesria and her kingdom’s sworn enemy. Hal also came to Colwick Hall for redemption, but the secrets in the estate may lead to both of their deaths.
With sinister forces at work, Wren and Hal realize they’ll have to join together if they have any hope of saving their kingdoms. But as Wren circles closer to the nefarious truth behind Hal’s illness, they realize they have no escape from the monsters within the mansion. All they have is each other, and a startling desire that could be their downfall.
Allison Saft’s Down Comes the Night is a snow-drenched romantic fantasy that keeps you racing through the pages long into the night.
I adored Alicia Jasinska’s debut The Dark Tide, a sapphic enemies to lovers witchy book! This paranormal book promises to be just as amazing – two sapphic monsters are competing for the heart of a prince. But then they realise they might be falling for each other.
The Wicked Deep meets House of Salt and Sorrows in this new standalone YA fantasy set in a snow-cloaked kingdom where witches are burned, and two enchantresses secretly compete for the heart of a prince, only to discover that they might be falling for each other.
It’s Karnawał season in the snow-cloaked Kingdom of Lechija, and from now until midnight when the church bells ring an end to Devil’s Tuesday time will be marked with wintry balls and glittery disguises, cavalcades of nightly torch-lit “kuligi” sleigh-parties.
Unbeknownst to the oblivious merrymakers, two monsters join the fun, descending upon the royal city of Warszów in the guise of two innocent girls. Newfound friends and polar opposites, Zosia and Marynka seem destined to have a friendship that’s stronger even than magic. But that’s put to the test when they realize they both have their sights set on Lechija’s pure-hearted prince. A pure heart contains immeasurable power and Marynka plans to bring the prince’s back to her grandmother in order to prove herself. While Zosia is determined to take his heart and its power for her own.
When neither will sacrifice their ambitions for the other, the festivities spiral into a wild contest with both girls vying to keep the hapless prince out of the other’s wicked grasp. But this isn’t some remote forest village, where a hint of stray magic might go unnoticed, Warszów is the icy capital of a kingdom that enjoys watching monsters burn, and if Zosia and Marynka’s innocent disguises continue to slip, their escalating rivalry might cost them not just the love they might have for each other, but both their lives.
Another stunning cover, YA horror covers are so beautiful this year! What Big Teeth follows a family of monsters and the girl trying to hold them together. It’s dark, it’s gothic, and looks absolutely fabulous! (February 2)
Rose Szabo’s thrilling debut is a dark and thrilling novel about a teen girl who returns home to her strange, wild family after years of estrangement, perfect for fans of Wilder Girls.
Eleanor Zarrin has been estranged from her wild family for years. When she flees boarding school after a horrifying incident, she goes to the only place she thinks is safe: the home she left behind. But when she gets there, she struggles to fit in with her monstrous relatives, who prowl the woods around the family estate and read fortunes in the guts of birds.
Eleanor finds herself desperately trying to hold the family together — in order to save them all, Eleanor must learn to embrace her family of monsters and tame the darkness inside her.
Exquisitely terrifying, beautiful, and strange, this fierce gothic fantasy will sink its teeth into you and never let go.
From the author of the Anna Dressed in Blood duology comes a new horror book! It follows a series of murders in the 1950s, with victims being found drained of blood, and the girl who’s found at the scene of one of the murders, covered in blood that isn’t hers. (September 21)
Sixteen bloodless bodies. Two teenagers. One impossible explanation.
Summer 1958—a string of murders plagues the Midwest. The victims are found in their cars and in their homes—even in their beds—their bodies drained, but with no blood anywhere.
September 19- the Carlson family is slaughtered in their Minnesota farmhouse, and the case gets its first lead: 15-year-old Marie Catherine Hale is found at the scene. She is covered in blood from head to toe, and at first she’s mistaken for a survivor. But not a drop of the blood is hers.
Michael Jensen, son of the local sheriff, yearns to become a journalist and escape his small-town. He never imagined that the biggest story in the country would fall into his lap, or that he would be pulled into the investigation, when Marie decides that he is the only one she will confess to.
As Marie recounts her version of the story, it falls to Michael to find the truth: What really happened the night that the Carlsons were killed? And how did one girl wind up in the middle of all these bodies?
This is going to be an absolutely stunning queer, Jewish, gothic novel! It’s set during the 1893 Chicago World Fair and follows Alter when he becomes possessed by the dybbuk of his best friend. (September 7)
Death lurks around every corner in this unforgettable Jewish historical fantasy about a city, a boy, and the shadows of the past that bind them both together.
Chicago, 1893. For Alter Rosen, this is the land of opportunity, and he dreams of the day he’ll have enough money to bring his mother and sisters to America, freeing them from the oppression they face in his native Romania.
But when Alter’s best friend, Yakov, becomes the latest victim in a long line of murdered Jewish boys, his dream begins to slip away. While the rest of the city is busy celebrating the World’s Fair, Alter is now living a nightmare: possessed by Yakov’s dybbuk, he is plunged into a world of corruption and deceit, and thrown back into the arms of a dangerous boy from his past. A boy who means more to Alter than anyone knows.
Now, with only days to spare until the dybbuk takes over Alter’s body completely, the two boys must race to track down the killer—before the killer claims them next.
This gothic retelling sounds absolutely amazing: goodbye original Jane Eyre, hello Ethiopian-inspired fantasy Jane Eyre!! Complete with a very creepy house trying to destroy everyone inside, one of my favourite gothic tropes! (November 9)
What the heart desires, the house destroys…
Kiersten White meets Tomi Adeyemi in this Ethiopian-inspired debut fantasy retelling of Jane Eyre.
Andromeda is a debtera—an exorcist hired to cleanse households of the Evil Eye. When a handsome young heir named Magnus Rochester reaches out to hire her, Andromeda quickly realizes this is a job like no other, with horrifying manifestations at every turn, and that Magnus is hiding far more than she has been trained for. Death is the most likely outcome if she stays, but leaving Magnus to live out his curse alone isn’t an option. Evil may roam the castle’s halls, but so does a burning desire.
I honestly cannot quite get over how gorgeous horror covers are this year. Look how beautiful this is?! This horror novel is set in a town where teenagers are disappearing, some turning up dead, with it all seeming linked to some ghost hunters who have recently returned to town. Also, it’s VERY LESBIAN. (August 3)
Courtney Gould’s thrilling debut The Dead and the Dark is about the things that lurk in dark corners, the parts of you that can’t remain hidden, and about finding home in places―and people―you didn’t expect.
The Dark has been waiting for far too long, and it won’t stay hidden any longer.
Something is wrong in Snakebite, Oregon. Teenagers are disappearing, some turning up dead, the weather isn’t normal, and all fingers seem to point to TV’s most popular ghost hunters who have just returned to town. Logan Ortiz-Woodley, daughter of TV’s ParaSpectors, has never been to Snakebite before, but the moment she and her dads arrive, she starts to get the feeling that there’s more secrets buried here than they originally let on.
Ashley Barton’s boyfriend was the first teen to go missing, and she’s felt his presence ever since. But now that the Ortiz-Woodleys are in town, his ghost is following her and the only person Ashley can trust is the mysterious Logan. When Ashley and Logan team up to figure out who—or what—is haunting Snakebite, their investigation reveals truths about the town, their families, and themselves that neither of them are ready for. As the danger intensifies, they realize that their growing feelings for each other could be a light in the darkness.
Another gorgeous cover!! To Break a Covenant is set in a mining town, haunted since an explosion that killed sixteen people. When strange things start happening to the townfolk, including sleepwalking and night terrors, a group of friends decide to enter the mine to find out what’s happening. (September 21)
Debut voice Alison Ames delivers with a chilling, feminist thriller, perfect for fans of Wilder Girls and Sawkill Girls.
Moon Basin has been haunted for as long as anyone can remember. It started when an explosion in the mine killed sixteen people. The disaster made it impossible to live in town, with underground fires spewing ash into the sky. But life in New Basin is just as fraught. The ex-mining town relies on its haunted reputation to bring in tourists, but there’s more truth to the rumors than most are willing to admit, and the mine still has a hold on everyone who lives there.
Clem and Nina form a perfect loop—best friends forever, and perhaps something more. Their circle opens up for a strange girl named Lisey with a knack for training crows, and Piper, whose father is fascinated with the mine in a way that’s anything but ordinary. The people of New Basin start experiencing strange phenomena—sleepwalking, night terrors, voices that only they can hear. And no matter how many vans of ghost hunters roll through, nobody can get to the bottom of what’s really going on. Which is why the girls decide to enter the mine themselves.
This is book 2 in the Lady Slayers series, which started with Blood Countess last year, a book about the most prolific female serial killer of all time. The great news is you don’t need to read these in order, as each book focuses on a different female killer! Popović is back and book 2 is about French murderer and fortune teller Catherine Monvoisin, who ends up playing twisted games that pits French nobility against each other and ends in murder. (April 6)
Book 2 in the Lady Slayers series, about French murderess and fortune teller Catherine Monvoisin
In 17th-century Paris, 19-year-old Catherine Monvoisin is a well-heeled jeweler’s wife with a peculiar taste for the arcane. She lives a comfortable life, far removed from a childhood of abject destitution—until her kind spendthrift of a husband lands them both in debt. Hell-bent on avoiding a return to poverty, Catherine must rely on her prophetic visions and the grimoire gifted to her by a talented diviner to reinvent herself as a sorceress. With the help of the grifter Marie Bosse, Catherine divines fortunes in the IIle de la Citee—home to sorcerers and scoundrels.
There she encounters the Marquise de Montespan, a stunning noblewoman. When the Marquise becomes Louis XIV’s royal mistress with Catherine’s help, her ascension catapults Catherine to notoriety. Catherine takes easily to her glittering new life as the Sorceress La Voisin, pitting the depraved noblesse against one other to her advantage. The stakes soar ever higher when her path crosses with that of a young magician. A charged rivalry between sorceress and magician leads to Black Masses, tangled deceptions, and grisly murder—and sets Catherine on a collision course that threatens her own life.
This YA gothic novel is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, following a sister trying to break her sister’s curse that turns her into a beast and makes her kill people (whilst also helping control who her sister kills by marking the perfume they buy with a scent designed to attract the beast). (September 14)
A gothic YA fantasy debut about a young woman striving to break her sister’s curse and stop the killing in her small French town
Seventeen-year-old Marie mixes perfumes to sell on market day in her small eighteenth-century French town. She wants to make enough to save a dowry for her sister, Ama, in hopes of Ama marrying well and Marie living in the level of freedom afforded only to spinster aunts. But her perfumes are more than sweet scents in cheap, cut-glass bottles: A certain few are laced with death. Marie laces the perfume delicately—not with poison but with a hint of honeysuckle she’s trained her sister to respond to. Marie marks her victim, and Ama attacks. But she doesn’t attack as a girl. She kills as a beast.
Marking Ama’s victims controls the damage to keep suspicion at bay. But when a young boy turns up dead one morning, Marie is forced to acknowledge she might be losing control of Ama. And if she can’t control her, she’ll have to cure her. Marie knows the only place she’ll find the cure is in the mansion where Ama was cursed in the first place, home of Lord Sebastien LeClaire. But once she gets into the mansion, she discovers dark secrets hidden away—secrets of the curse, of Lord Sebastien . . . and of herself.
I’m not usually hugely keen to read short story collections, which means this one sounds extra specially amazing to make it to my most anticipated horror list! This is a collection of stories mostly based off Filipino mythology and folklore and they promise to all be absolutely gorgeously written! (February 23)
“Am I dead?”
Mebuyen sighs. She was hoping the girl would not ask.
Spells and stories, urban legends and immigrant tales: the magic in Isabel Yap’s debut collection jumps right off the page, from the joy in her new novella, ‘A Spell for Foolish Hearts’ to the terrifying tension of the urban legend ‘Have You Heard the One About Anamaria Marquez’.
One of the first YA horror books I read after I got into the genre a few years ago was Kate Alice Marshall’s Rules for Vanishing, and it was so so creepy!! I really loved the way she used documents/video transcripts etc to help tell the story, it’s one of my favourite horror writing styles. This one sounds just as creepy, it’s about a girl who has memories of drowning and her mother disappearing during it, but she has never been in the ocean and her mother died in a hospital. And this one uses a similar writing style to Rules for Vanishing too!
Kara Thomas meets Twin Peaks in this supernatural thriller about one girl’s hunt for the truth about her mother’s disappearance.
Sophia’s first memory is of drowning. She remembers the darkness of the water and the briny taste as it fills her throat. She remembers the cold shock of going under. She remembers her mother pulling her to safety before disappearing forever. But Sophia has never been in the ocean. And her mother died years ago in a hospital. Or so she has been told her whole life.
A series of clues have led Sophia to the island of Bitter Rock, Alaska, where she talked her way into a summer internship at the Landon Avian Research Center, the same center her mother worked at right before she died. There, she meets the disarmingly clever Liam, whose own mother runs the LARC, as well as Abby, who’s following a mystery of her own: a series of unexplained disappearances. People have been vanishing from Bitter Rock for decades, leaving only their ghostly echoes behind. When it looks like their two mysteries might be one and the same, Sophia vows to dig up the truth, no matter how many lies she has to tell along the way. Even if it leads her to a truth she may not want to face.
Our Last Echoes is an eerie collection of found documents and written confessionals, in the style of Rules for Vanishing, with supernatural twists that keep you questioning what is true and what is an illusion.
Nothing excites me more than reading ‘accidentally releasing a demon’. Which is what this book is all about! It follows a teen who’s working at the school library over the summer and an intolerable patron after they accidentally release a demon from a grimoire.
Tess Matheson only wants three things: time to practice her cello, for her sister to be happy, and for everyone else to leave her alone.
Instead, Tess finds herself working all summer at her boarding school library, shelving books and dealing with the intolerable patrons. The worst of them is Eliot Birch: snide, privileged, and constantly requesting forbidden grimoires. After a bargain with Eliot leads to the discovery of an ancient book in the library’s grimoire collection, the pair accidentally unleash a book-bound demon.
The demon will stop at nothing to stay free, manipulating ink to threaten those Tess loves and dismantling Eliot’s strange magic. Tess is plagued by terrible dreams of the devil and haunting memories of a boy who wears Eliot’s face. All she knows is to stay free, the demon needs her… and he’ll have her, dead or alive.
And for the last horror book on the list, let’s end on a LoveOzYA one! (For those who haven’t heard that term before, LoveOzYA is an initiative set up in Australia to support local Australian YA authors). I love gothic books so I have very high hopes for this gothic fantasy book about monsters and magic and a cursed lake!
A lush gothic fantasy about monsters and magic, set on the banks of a cursed lake. Perfect for fans of Naomi Novik and Brigid Kemmerer.
There are monsters in the world.
When Violeta Graceling arrives at haunted Lakesedge estate, she expects to find a monster. She knows the terrifying rumors about Rowan Sylvanan, who drowned his entire family when he was a boy. But neither the estate nor the monster are what they seem.
There are monsters in the woods.
As Leta falls for Rowan, she discovers he is bound to the Lord Under, the sinister death god lurking in the black waters of the lake. A creature to whom Leta is inexplicably drawn…
There’s a monster in the shadows, and now it knows my name.
Now, to save Rowan—and herself—Leta must confront the darkness in her past, including unraveling the mystery of her connection to the Lord Under.
And there you have it! Some of the amazing horror books we have coming in 2021. What horror book are you most anticipating this year? And do you have any recommendations I’ve missed? I would love to hear in the comments!
#5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @Local Bee Hunter’s Nook and you can learn more about it here or in the post announcing it. It occurs every Monday when we post about 5 books on our TBR. Thank you E. for the awesome graphic for these posts as well!
Hi everyone,
This week, in classic Rachel fashion, I managed to break my glasses! And I have really terrible eyesight. So I’ve had to make do with an old prescription pair and distances have been….blurry, to say the least. And then I had to do the whole ‘trying on glasses and deciding which ones don’t make my face look shit’ but with a mask covering most of my face. So whilst I’ve chosen a pair, I have NO IDEA what my face is actually going to look like, please wish me luck for when they come in three weeks!
This week on #5OnMyTBR we’re looking at books about love! I’m not usually the biggest romance reader, but I do have a few on my TBR, alongside some books which are definitely more contemporary with a side of love!
Okay so this one technically isn’t on my TBR yet because it doesn’t release until the end of the month (and then I have to contend with the delays getting overseas preorders actually to Australia), but I can’t wait to read this one, so it’s on the list!! Honey Girl is all about a straight-A, rule abiding, high achiever who goes to Vegas for a girls trip and gets drunkenly married to a woman whose name she doesn’t remember.
I’ve been meaning to read this romance novel since the middle of last year and still haven’t, yes, I am the actual worst. Boyfriend Material was recommended to me by so many people, and I think I’ll love it, mainly because it has one of my favourite romance tropes: fake-dating!!
Another book I’ve been meaning to read for an embarassingly long time…But this is the month!! I’m planning to read it for one of the prompts for the F/F February readathon happening this month. It’s about a girl from Trinidad who’s caught kissing the pastor’s daughter and is sent to America to live with her father as punishment.
Darius the Great Deserves Better is the sequel to one of my favourite ever YAs, Darius the Great is Not Okay. It dealt so personally and honestly with depression and I can’t wait to see what happens in the sequel, when Darius finds himself with a boyfriend, an internship, and a spot on the soccer team, but now isn’t sure if that’s all he wants.
The Boy From the Mish is one of the most exciting LoveOzYA books coming this year (if not the most exciting). YA literature desperately needs more Aboriginal Australian voices. And The Boy From the Mish is queer as well! It’s a funny and heartwarming book about Jackson and the friendship he begins with a troubled boy tagging along with his aunt on their annual visit.
Can’t wait to see what’s on everyone’s lists this week! I really need to read more romance books/books about love because so much of what I read is more depressing and I really do appreciate happier books now! Let me know if you’ve read any of these ones in the comments!
Rep: Scottish Zimbabwean mc/side characters, Scottish Indian main side character, wheelchair user
Page extent: 336 pages
Rating:
Sixth Sense meets Stranger Things in T. L. Huchu’s The Library of the Dead, a sharp contemporary fantasy following a precocious and cynical teen as she explores the shadowy magical underside of modern Edinburgh.
When a child goes missing in Edinburgh’s darkest streets, young Ropa investigates. She’ll need to call on Zimbabwean magic as well as her Scottish pragmatism to hunt down clues. But as shadows lengthen, will the hunter become the hunted?
When ghosts talk, she will listen…
Ropa dropped out of school to become a ghostalker. Now she speaks to Edinburgh’s dead, carrying messages to the living. A girl’s gotta earn a living, and it seems harmless enough. Until, that is, the dead whisper that someone’s bewitching children–leaving them husks, empty of joy and life. It’s on Ropa’s patch, so she feels honor-bound to investigate. But what she learns will change her world.
She’ll dice with death (not part of her life plan…), discovering an occult library and a taste for hidden magic. She’ll also experience dark times. For Edinburgh hides a wealth of secrets, and Ropa’s gonna hunt them all down.
The Library of the Dead is the start of a fascinating new fantasy series set in a dystopian Edinburgh (my home city, kind of…) and inspired by Zimbabwean magic. It has a really interesting world, but there just wasn’t enough time spent with the most interesting parts for me to love this one.
The Library of the Dead follows Ropa, a teen living in a caravan village with her grandmother and sister. Ropa earns money for rent by ghosttalking: she delivers messages from ghosts to living people. But when one ghost asks her to find her missing son, Ropa is drawn into a huge conspiracy that is kidnapping children and milking them for youth.
The book is definitely on the stranger side. It’s written in a very young (young as in teen/hip/cool) style, and is absolutely full of Scottish slang, Scottish idioms, Scottish ways of saying things. It is set in Edinburgh which is the closest city to where I grew up (I lived in the middle of nowhere) so I loved getting to see all this Scottish history, speech and places. Huchu has done an absolutely brilliant job of writing from the POV of a young Scottish teen: it was hugely reminiscent of my childhood, and of pretty much every single conversation I have with everyone back home whenever I talk to them. Unfortunately, I have come to the realisation that the way we Scottish people talk is INFURIATING. How do people put up with us using the word like every two sentences?! Look, Huchu did such a great job getting it sound so realistic, but I just didn’t really get on board with it because it kept annoying me. I think a lot of the annoyance possibly came from the stream of consciousness style first person POV. This is obviously just not a style I jig with, it felt like so much unecessary and random commentary on events. But whether it was the Scottish style of talk or the stream of consciousness that annoyed me most, I now plan to change literally everything about the way I talk because I don’t know how people put up with me if this is what I talk like (and it definitely is, I recognised so many things I say!!)
In saying this, I think this POV/style really helps you discover more about Ropa, who is one of the best things about this book. She is such a brilliant person: so full of spunk and quirkiness and fierceness and anger at the injustice in the world. She’s so full of energy that she really burns off the page and eclipses what’s actually happening. You kind of just want to keep reading just to know what ridiculous thing she’s going to think next – I was snorting with laughter the whole way through. But this did also have the downside of really taking you out of what should be a horrific, gruesome, dark world. Nothing ever felt really serious because of how Ropa reacted to situations. I do also think Priya was written very well (and I love seeing a disabled character in a wheelchair in such an action packed fantasy!!) She was so much fun (hello green hair?! She is definitely my people) and I loved her energy for life and danger.
What I also loved was this world. There are so many fantastic elements. For starters, the magic! Ropa’s ghosttalking uses a mbira (a Zimbabwean musical instrument used for communing with the dead) to help tether ghosts to the human world where she can talk with them. Some of the passages describing the music/mbira as Ropa used it were absolutely beautiful and were some of my favourite passages in the book. I also really liked the magic that requires training aspect: it’s involved lots of science and philosophy as Ropa tried to learn magic, that put a different spin on magic than a lot of other fantasy novels do. But there just wasn’t enough of this! The mbira disappears after the first 20% of the book and I just longed for it to return because that magic was so cool. Some of my favourite scenes are Ropa’s ghosttalking deliveries (particularly the gay baking scene!!) But they also just disappesred fairly early because of the main quest of finding the missing children.
I also loved the very interesting The Library of the Dead, the book’s namesake, a library for Scottish magic built in a tomb! The worlds of the ghosts, such as the EveryThere, were also really fascinating, with the terrifying creatures stalking anyone alive who reaches the place. But as with above, these excellent worldbuilding details barely featured. I would have thought The Library of the Dead especially would have had a more important role in the story, given it’s what the book is named after.
The later half of the book kind of goes back and forth between some really interesting, almost-creepy moments that are weird and darker and you don’t really know what the fuck is going on which is great (like the house with the Brounie!) Or they go slightly too far and verge more into this-doesn’t-make-huge-amounts-of-sense and has come out of nowhere (e.g. Who the actual villain is. A person named only once is the villain? What?!)
So all in all this book was a very conflicting read for me! There are things I absolutely loved and things I really didn’t. But I definitely encourage you to read this one, particularly if you enjoy the stream of consciousness style of writing/first person POV, as I think that was the main thing I struggled with. The world is fascinating and Ropa is such a fierce and gutsy character, so full of life she leaps of the pages.
Sixteen-year-old Deka lives in fear and anticipation of the blood ceremony that will determine whether she will become a member of her village. Already different from everyone else because of her unnatural intuition, Deka prays for red blood so she can finally feel like she belongs.
But on the day of the ceremony, her blood runs gold, the color of impurity–and Deka knows she will face a consequence worse than death.
Then a mysterious woman comes to her with a choice: stay in the village and submit to her fate, or leave to fight for the emperor in an army of girls just like her. They are called alaki–near-immortals with rare gifts. And they are the only ones who can stop the empire’s greatest threat.
Knowing the dangers that lie ahead yet yearning for acceptance, Deka decides to leave the only life she’s ever known. But as she journeys to the capital to train for the biggest battle of her life, she will discover that the great walled city holds many surprises. Nothing and no one are quite what they seem to be–not even Deka herself.
The Gilded Ones has one of the most stunning covers of the year, and after reading it, I think it’s going to be one of the biggest YA fantasy books of the year! It’s a very fast paced, action heavy fantasy with some really excellent worldbuilding and a fascinating patriarchal society built on a religion. I do think the pace was at times detrimental, but this was still a very fun read and it was great to see some grimdark fantasy make the move to YA!
The Gilded Ones opens brutally: Deka is going through a rite of passage that will prove whether she is a pure woman, or if she is a demon. When her blood runs gold, she is proven to be demon and tortured by those she once called friends. Until, rescue comes from the most unlikely of places: the emperor, who wishes her to fight for his army. What follows is a bloody and brutal journey as Deka is trained to fight deathshrieks, unnatural creatures who are viciously murdering hoards of people across the empire. But not everything is quite as it seems, and the more Deka trains and her demon powers grow, the less convinced she is that she’s even a demon.
The worldbuilding is one of the best things about this book. Forna has built this West African inspired society, a place where religion has built a society based on the suffering of women for the will of men. The religion and history of the nation, the history of The Gilded Ones, demons who terrorised the nation before they were imprisoned, and the whole process of women forced to go through the violent rite of passage to prove they are not demon, are all detailed excellently. There is such a sense of history that really put fear behind the power of men. The way Forna writes about the way women have been trained to fear themselves, to fear their power, and to make themselves small for the sake of men, was absolutely brilliant and the parallels to our world were so clearly rendered.
I also thought the plot was absolutely fantastic. The way the mystery of the deathshrieks, the alaki and the Gilded Ones play out was so interesting. I absolutely sped through the book whenever I picked it up because the mystery really drives you forward, it’s so fast paced. There are lots of unexpected twists to the story that I really enjoyed because I was always kept on my toes!
In saying that, the speed of the book is also often it’s downfall. There are so many times, particularly the more emotional behaviours, decisions, feelings etc, that just happen far too fast and it really dragged me out of the story. From how quickly Deka seemed to get over the horrific torture she goes through, to the romance that kinda hits you out of nowhere with almost no time on page with the two characters together, it’s just very jarring in what is an otherwise pretty excellent YA. There’s also a couple of rather annoying plotholes that I couldn’t stop thinking about – where did the awful sense of fear and control at the barracks disappear to after the first scene? I mean, for example, Deka is even allowed to keep a pet?! In the place where they flay you if you don’t kill enough deathshrieks?! It doesn’t really make a lot of sense.
(Please note the next para has minor spoilers.)
The plot between White Hands and the emperor also really annoyed me. How the fuck does White Hands have so much power if the emperor knows exactly who she is? Why would he trust her? It makes absolutely no sense.
(Spoilers over!)
But despite these issues, I think teens are going to absolutely love this book. It has such an impactful and interesting plot that you can get over the few issues with it. It was a very enjoyable read and I’ll definitely pick up the sequel when released!
It’s February which means it is time for annual readathon F/F February! This month long readathon is run by Imi (@imireviewsbooks on Twitter) and Ellie (@faerieontheshelf) over at Beyond a Bookshelf, and it’s a readathon all about celebrating f/f books! There’s both a reading challenge bingo board and an Instagram challenge, and I’ll be doing both of these. There’s 9 reading prompts, but I’ve also chosen some extra books to switch in and out as I’m feeling very mood-ready this month. So without further ado, here’s my very rough TBR for February!
An F/F audiobook, graphic novel, or multi-media story
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine (okay slightly cheating with this prompt as I don’t have any audiobooks/graphic novels on hand, so I’m reading an ARC instead!)
I’m also wanting to fit in a reread of N.K Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy….sooooo there is not a chance I can fit all this in.
And that’s my (extremely optimistic) TBR for the month! There is no way I can read this many books, I think I’m going to struggle just to get the nine prompts completed as I’ve still got a lot of judging reading to do for the Aurealis Awards. But I’m giving myself lots of options! Have you read any of these? Which one do you think I should read first? Let me know in the comments!
#5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @Local Bee Hunter’s Nook and you can learn more about it here or in the post announcing it. It occurs every Monday when we post about 5 books on our TBR. Thank you E. for the awesome graphic for these posts as well!
Hi everyone,
I can’t believe it’s February already! The last month has both gone by so fast, but also I feel like it has been an entire year since my time off work over Christmas. And there are so many months before I’ll have that much time off again! I feel like I also didn’t get a great start to my reading in January because I have been absolutely obsessed with the game Hades!! I finally, finally beat Hades for the first time over the weekend which I am EXTREMELY happy about! If any fellow Hades fans are about, I would love to talk to you about it!
This week we’re looking at recommendations from friends, so here are five books I’ve been strongly recommended by friends both in and out of the online community!
I seriously need to read this book. It has been on my TBR for so long. And I keep seeing friends review it and adore it and then reread it 4 times in the space of my 0 times and it’s just getting embarassing. It’s set in 1977 Uruguay and follows five women across 35 years as they live under the Uruguayan dictatorship.
Piranesi was my best friend’s favourite book of 2020, so of course I need to read it! (Especially after I’m making them read Mexican Gothic, my favourite book of 2020). Piranesi is all about a person called Piranesi who is trapped in a labyrinth house.
I’ve lost count of the number of both online and in real life people who have told me to read this book. WHY AM I SO BAD AT READING BOOKS I SAY I’M GOING TO READ?! Boyfriend Material is a queer romcom with one of my favourite tropes – fake-dating!
Akata Witch was recommended to me by someone at work. I’ve tried one of Nnedi Okorafor’s other novels (Who Fears Death) but I wasn’t a huge fan so hopefully I’ll have a better go with this middlegrade series! Akata Witch is about an albino girl in Nigeria who joins a coven and has to hunt down a man responsible for kidnapping and maiming children.
Another book it is embarassing I haven’t read yet – especially since I’m pretty sure it’s the book that appeared on the most #5OnMyTBRs in 2020 and yet somehow, I STILL HAVEN’T READ IT. Seven Devils is a space opera following a mammoth seven different POVs, belonging to seven different resistance fighters who are trying to free the galaxy from a ruthless ruler.
And that’s the first #5OnMyTBR of February! Have you read any of these books? Let me know in the comments! And as I mentioned at the top, if you’re loving Hades, I would love to chat with you about it! What is your favourite weapon? What powers do you love? TELL ME ALL!
A lyrical and dreamy reimagining of Dracula’s brides, A DOWRY OF BLOOD is a story of desire, obsession, and emancipation.
Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant into a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things. Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband’s dark secrets.
With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. But bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death.
Content warnings from the author: emotional, verbal, and physical intimate partner abuse, gaslighting, war, famine, and plague, blood and gore, consensual sexual content, sadomasochism, self harm, body horror, violence and murder, alcohol use, depression and mania, sexual assault (not directed at any named character), drug use, drowning
Some books just leave you a shuddering, incomplete creature, unsure of how to go on in the world after you read them. This is A Dowry of Blood. There is such beauty and reverence in this prose that, sitting here after immediately finishing and trying to write this review, I find myself unsure of how the world works anymore, unsure of what to do next, longing to just sit and contemplate the words I just read.
A Dowry of Blood is a reimagining of Dracula’s brides, written from the point of view of Constanta, one of his brides, through the form of letters written to Dracula. She tells of their life together, how they came to be joined with his other brides, Magdalena and Alexi, and how they began to discover his dark secrets.
Blood has never been sexier. From the very first pages, this book just oozes with lust and desire, the prose so sumptuous and rich and decadent. It is like drowning in chocolate or wine, pleasure mixing with pain so intimately that you can’t separate one from the other. The fire with which desire floods this book is uncontrollable and obsessive: the way Gibson has written desire as something so deeply embedded in religious worship is so stunning that nothing I can say in this review will ever do it justice. Reading it feels like an awakening: you are as enraptured in the desire as Constanta, Magdalena and Alexi are. This book is a work of art, one that could not more perfectly explore the darkness and danger in desire. The way desire is represented through this sense of worship and faith is unlike anything I’ve read before, and yet so powerful and so beautiful that it feels like nothing will compare to it ever again.
These characters were just as perfectly rendered as the prose. The constant sense of foreboding, that sharp inhale of breath you and his brides take whenever Dracula, unnamed throughout the book but so breathlessly there in every sentence, walks into a room. The power he breathes into this book to have such presence in a world where he is not even named, where Constanta purposefully leaves him nameless to remove his power from her story. Constanta herself, the first of his brides, begins her story in these letters with her guilt and fear of him, but she gathers such strength as she writes her story. She gathers the love he brought into their lives in the form of Magdalena and Alexi and uses them against him. It is her love and pure, protective ferocity that brings about his downfall, that reveals his dark secrets, her fear of seeing them hurt anymore that seals his fate.
Then there’s Magdalena, a glowing, shining light of energy and passion and cleverness, subtly manipulating the room from her very first pages. Her change across the book feels most noticeable, as it leaves the most vivid hole in its wake, as her shining desire for life and freedom is brutally torn apart. And finally, the last of the brides, Alexi. He is the fire and brimstone, the terror who won’t go down without fighting, who will tear away from Dracula’s grasp even as he is strangled by it. These characters are so intricately woven together, their horrors shared together in Dracula’s control as he exerts his manipulation over them, elaborately ensuring they see that no matter what he does, they will shatter into even more pieces without him there. It digs so deeply and hauntingly into that slow journey from love to brutality in abusive relationships that the book feels as raw and bruised as anything I’ve ever read.
A Dowry of Blood is a book full of worship, telling a story about the way pain and pleasure, abuse and desire, can be so intricately wrapped that the unravelling can take centuries and break you in the process. It is a work of art, a book that has prose so beautiful that you come out of the book in a haze, wondering how you can return to the beauty beholden in its pages.
Rep: bisexual mc and gay mc, lots of queer side characters
Page extent: 432 pages
Rating:
While the Iskat Empire has long dominated the system through treaties and political alliances, several planets, including Thea, have begun to chafe under Iskat’s rule. When tragedy befalls Imperial Prince Taam, his Thean widower, Jainan, is rushed into an arranged marriage with Taam’s cousin, the disreputable Kiem, in a bid to keep the rising hostilities between the two worlds under control.
But when it comes to light that Prince Taam’s death may not have been an accident, and that Jainan himself may be a suspect, the unlikely pair must overcome their misgivings and learn to trust one another as they navigate the perils of the Iskat court, try to solve a murder, and prevent an interplanetary war… all while dealing with their growing feelings for each other.
Content warnings: domestic abuse (inc on page verbal, physical, emotional and sexual abuse), torture
There are times when you know a book sounds like everything you’ve dreamed of and you worry it might never live up to your expections. That is definitely not the case with Winter’s Orbit: this book lived up to the hype in my brain so much. It was an absolute joy to behold and read, it is the direction I have been longing for this genre to go – light scifi with romance, familiar, favourite tropes and brilliant character development and queer relationships. I would die for Kiem and Jainan and I long for more stories in their world.
Winter’s Orbit is described as Red, White and Royal Blue in space and I can definitely see that comparison. It follows Kiem and Jainan after they are rushed into an arranged marriage just a month after Jainan’s previous husband, Taam, died, in order to sign a treaty keeping the Iskat Empire from war with the rest of the galaxy. But as it is revealed Taam was murdered, the treaty is at risk and Kiem and Jainan begin investigating.
I can completely see the RW&RB reference. Winter’s Orbit has that same comforting joy about reading it, the sense of feeling completely at home and in love with the book and its characters. Kiem and Jainan were just so perfectly written and I loved the way their relationship developed from the uncommunicative first few days after they’re forcibly married, to the way they risk their lives for the other. Miscommunication is so often a trope in romance, but in this book, it actually makes sense – Jainan with his dark history of the marriage with Taam is so terrified of opening up and sure Kiem wants nothing to do with him. Meanwhile Kiem is distraught that Jainan has been forced to marry him whilst grieving, and does everything he can to give Jainan as much space as possible. It takes time for Jainan to recover from Taam’s actions, and slowly begin to see Kiem as the genuine, lovable, won’t-ever-stop-talking husband that he is. The two of them together brought so much joy to me, they were just perfectly wonderful. I want the world for them.
The murder mystery was also very well done, particularly in the second half. I was absolutely racing to get through the book and find out what was going on and find out what was happening to a particular character that I couldn’t bear to see hurt.
I also loved all the worldbuilding details. It’s definitely not your usual heavy science fiction with so much complicated terminology and world building. Instead, it was expertly woven into the story in a way that kept it light. I was particularly fond of the way gender presentation was included in this world, through use of accessories to know how an individual identified. I love that including things like this is becoming more common in scifi and I really wish we could just see it adapted in the real world! The world is also so expansive, we get little glimpses into other societies across the galaxy and I really hope we get to explore more of the world in Maxwell’s future novels. I’m particularly interested in exploring Thea, Jainan’s home planet with its different clan style system, or the Resolution, the sort of controlling force of the galaxy with some very interesting technology who kind of protect the smaller empires like Iskat from war.
I find it so difficult to write reviews for books I absolutely loved. All I can say about Winter’s Orbit is just that it filled me with so much joy, I am in love with this world and these characters and this is going to be a comfort read for so many years to come!
I’m here with another post of books to look out for in 2021. Today, I’m looking at science fiction, and all I say is wow, we have an absolutely incredible year of scifi coming! For some personal most anticipated novels, check out YA books The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He and Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao; and for adult, Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki and the brilliant Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell which I have read and adored!
DOESN’T THIS JUST SOUND DELIGHTFUL?!?! Two sworn enemies from the last two remaining countries on Earth are sent to space to conduct a resuce mission, with missing memories, strange things happening on the ship, and a handsome brooding shipmate. Sign me the fuck up.
Two boys, alone in space.
After the first settler on Titan trips her distress signal, neither remaining country on Earth can afford to scramble a rescue of its own, and so two sworn enemies are installed in the same spaceship.
Ambrose wakes up on the Coordinated Endeavor, with no memory of a launch. There’s more that doesn’t add up: Evidence indicates strangers have been on board, the ship’s operating system is voiced by his mother, and his handsome, brooding shipmate has barricaded himself away. But nothing will stop Ambrose from making his mission succeed—not when he’s rescuing is his own sister.
In order to survive the ship’s secrets, Ambrose and Kodiak will need to work together and learn to trust one another… especially once they discover what they are truly up against. Love might be the only way to survive.
Legendary adult science fiction author, Charlie Jane Anders, is coming to YA with her debut Victories Greater Than Death. I have an ARC of this one and I can’t wait to read it in the next month or so! It’s described as Star Wars meets Dr Who so there’s almost no way I could dislike this.
A thrilling adventure set against an intergalactic war with international bestselling author Charlie Jane Anders at the helm in her YA debut—think Star Wars meets Doctor Who, and buckle your seatbelts.
Tina has always known her destiny is outside the norm—after all, she is the human clone of the most brilliant alien commander in all the galaxies (even if the rest of the world is still deciding whether aliens exist). But she is tired of waiting for her life to begin.
And then it does—and maybe Tina should have been more prepared. At least she has a crew around her that she can trust—and her best friend at her side. Now, they just have to save the world.
From internationally bestselling author Charlie Jane Anders (All the Birds in the Sky) comes a thrilling adventure set against an intergalactic war—Anders’s long-awaited YA debut.
Yesterday is History is a time travel novel about and by a Black, queer man and I very much need this book in my life. It’s about a boy who gets a liver transplant and can now travel through time. He is torn between one boy in the past and one in his present as he tries to learn the consequences of jumping through time and changing the future.
Weeks ago, Andre Cobb received a much-needed liver transplant.
He’s ready for his life to finally begin, until one night, when he passes out and wakes up somewhere totally unexpected…in 1969, where he connects with a magnetic boy named Michael.
And then, just as suddenly as he arrived, he slips back to present-day Boston, where the family of his donor is waiting to explain that his new liver came with a side effect—the ability to time travel. And they’ve tasked their youngest son, Blake, with teaching Andre how to use his unexpected new gift.
Andre splits his time bouncing between the past and future. Between Michael and Blake. Michael is everything Andre wishes he could be, and Blake, still reeling from the death of his brother, Andre’s donor, keeps him at arm’s length despite their obvious attraction to each other.
Torn between two boys, one in the past and one in the present, Andre has to figure out where he belongs—and more importantly who he wants to be—before the consequences of jumping in time catch up to him and change his future for good.
Rise of the Red Hand is coming from a publisher that has only been around about a year, but have published some of the most exciting novels in the genre (Erewhon). It sounds so incredible, a scifi portrayal of the future of climate change set in South Asia and following a hacker and revolutionary trying to take down the government.
A rare, searing portrayal of the future of climate change in South Asia. A streetrat turned revolutionary and the disillusioned hacker son of a politician try to take down a ruthlessly technocratic government that sacrifices its poorest citizens to build its utopia.
The South Asian Province is split in two. Uplanders lead luxurious lives inside a climate-controlled biodome, dependent on technology and gene therapy to keep them healthy and youthful forever. Outside, the poor and forgotten scrape by with discarded black-market robotics, a society of poverty-stricken cyborgs struggling to survive in slums threatened by rising sea levels, unbreathable air, and deadly superbugs.
Ashiva works for the Red Hand, an underground network of revolutionaries fighting the government, which is run by a merciless computer algorithm that dictates every citizen’s fate. She’s a smuggler with the best robotic arm and cybernetic enhancements the slums can offer, and her cargo includes the most vulnerable of the city’s abandoned children.
When Ashiva crosses paths with the brilliant hacker Riz-Ali, a privileged Uplander who finds himself embroiled in the Red Hand’s dangerous activities, they uncover a horrifying conspiracy that the government will do anything to bury. From armed guardians kidnapping children to massive robots flattening the slums, to a pandemic that threatens to sweep through the city like wildfire, Ashiva and Riz-Ali will have to put aside their differences in order to fight the system and save the communities they love from destruction.
One of TWO very exciting Pacific Rim style YA scifi novels coming this year, Gearbreakers follows a rebel who takes down mechanised weapons and finds herself in prison after one of her missions, where she teams up with one of the weapon pilots to take down the rulers who use the weapons to wage war and oppression.
Two girls on opposite sides of a war discover they’re fighting for a common purpose–and falling for each other–in Zoe Hana Mikuta’s high-octane debut Gearbreakers, perfect for fans of Pacific Rim, Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga, and Marie Lu’s Legend series.
We went past praying to deities and started to build them instead...
The shadow of Godolia’s tyrannical rule is spreading, aided by their giant mechanized weapons known as Windups. War and oppression are everyday constants for the people of the Badlands, who live under the thumb of their cruel Godolia overlords.
Eris Shindanai is a Gearbreaker, a brash young rebel who specializes in taking down Windups from the inside. When one of her missions goes awry and she finds herself in a Godolia prison, Eris meets Sona Steelcrest, a cybernetically enhanced Windup pilot. At first Eris sees Sona as her mortal enemy, but Sona has a secret: She has intentionally infiltrated the Windup program to destroy Godolia from within.
As the clock ticks down to their deadliest mission yet, a direct attack to end Godolia’s reign once and for all, Eris and Sona grow closer–as comrades, friends, and perhaps something more…
I’ve only read one novel from Akemi Dawn Bowman (Starfish), but it was such a brilliant book that I know I need to read everything else she has and will write. The Infinity Courts is an afterlife book, set in a place called Infinity, where a virtual assistant used on Earth forces humans into servitude in repayment for how she has been forced to serve in the real world. This sounds different and interesting and I can’t wait to read Bowman in a scifi realm.
Eighteen-year-old Nami Miyamoto is certain her life is just beginning. She has a great family, just graduated high school, and is on her way to a party where her entire class is waiting for her—including, most importantly, the boy she’s been in love with for years.
The only problem? She’s murdered before she gets there.
When Nami wakes up, she learns she’s in a place called Infinity, where human consciousness goes when physical bodies die. She quickly discovers that Ophelia, a virtual assistant widely used by humans on Earth, has taken over the afterlife and is now posing as a queen, forcing humans into servitude the way she’d been forced to serve in the real world. Even worse, Ophelia is inching closer and closer to accomplishing her grand plans of eradicating human existence once and for all.
As Nami works with a team of rebels to bring down Ophelia and save the humans under her imprisonment, she is forced to reckon with her past, her future, and what it is that truly makes us human. From award-winning author Akemi Dawn Bowman comes an incisive, action-packed tale that explores big questions about technology, grief, love, and humanity.
Joan He is one of the most exciting authors in YA, I absolutely adored her debut Descendant of the Crane and I am just as excited to read her newest one, The Ones We’re Meant to Find. This is a Black Mirror-esque scifi with He’s trademark twisty nature, and follows two sisters. One is on an abandoned island with no memory of anything except that she has a sister, the other is a STEM prodigy in an eco-city, the last unpolluted place on earth.
One of the most twisty, surprising, engaging page-turner YAs you’ll read this year—We Were Liars with sci-fi scope, Lost with a satisfying resolution.
Cee awoke on an abandoned island three years ago. With no idea of how she was marooned, she only has a rickety house, an old android, and a single memory: she has a sister, and Cee needs to find her.
STEM prodigy Kasey wants escape from the science and home she once trusted. The eco-city—Earth’s last unpolluted place—is meant to be sanctuary for those commited to planetary protection, but it’s populated by people willing to do anything for refuge, even lie. Now, she’ll have to decide if she’s ready to use science to help humanity, even though it failed the people who mattered most.
I really loved E.K Johnston’s The Afterword, a quiet fantasy novel about what happens after the quest is over. I can’t wait to see what she does in a scifi context, in a book about a family-run interstellar freighter.
A thought-provoking new YA space adventure from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Ahsoka.
Set on a family-run interstellar freighter called the Harland and a mysterious remote space station, E. K. Johnston’s latest is story of survival and self-determination.
Pendt Harland’s family sees her as a waste of food on their long-haul space cruiser when her genes reveal an undesirable mutation. But if she plays her cards right she might have a chance to do much more than survive. During a space-station layover, Pendt escapes and forms a lucky bond with the Brannick twins, the teenage heirs of the powerful family that owns the station. Against all odds, the trio hatches a long-shot scheme to take over the station and thwart the destinies they never wished for.
I’ve had an ARC of this book since last year, but as it was pushed back to a 2021 pub date because of covid, I haven’t read it yet! But soon! Fragile Remedy is about a world with genetically engineered medi-tissue people, who have been created as a cure for the rich suffering from fatal lung rot. But GEMs have a failsafe: their health will rapidly deteriorate unless they are regularly dosed with medication by the creators, a way to keep the GEMs close. The book follows a GEM called Nate who has to decide whether to work for the shadowy terrorist organisation to keep himself alive, or stay and die with the boy he loves.
Sixteen-year-old Nate is a GEM—Genetically Engineered Medi-tissue created by the scientists of Gathos City as a cure for the elite from the fatal lung rot ravaging the population. As a child, he was smuggled out of the laboratory where he was held captive and into the Withers—a quarantined, lawless region. Nate manages to survive by using his engineering skills to become a Tinker, fixing broken tech in exchange for food or a safe place to sleep. When he meets Reed, a kind and fiercely protective boy that makes his heart race, and his misfit gang of scavengers, Nate finds the family he’s always longed for—even if he can’t risk telling them what he is.
But Gathos created a genetic failsafe in their GEMs—a flaw that causes their health to rapidly deteriorate as they age unless they are regularly dosed with medication controlled by Gathos City. As Nate’s health declines, his hard-won freedom is put in jeopardy. Violence erupts across the Withers, his illegal supply of medicine is cut off, and a vicious attack on Reed threatens to expose his secret. With time running out, Nate is left with only two options: work for a shadowy terrorist organization that has the means to keep him alive, or stay — and die — with the boy he loves.
The Electric Kingdom looks to be a more hopeful outlook on a deadly flu pandemic that what the actual world has given us. It follows a girl and her DOG and really that’s all I need to know (and NO the dog does not die!!!! At least according to Goodreads).
When a deadly Fly Flu sweeps the globe, it leaves a shell of the world that once was. Among the survivors are eighteen-year-old Nico and her dog, on a voyage devised by Nico’s father to find a mythical portal; a young artist named Kit, raised in an old abandoned cinema; and the enigmatic Deliverer, who lives Life after Life in an attempt to put the world back together. As swarms of infected Flies roam the earth, these few survivors navigate the woods of post-apocalyptic New England, meeting others along the way, each on their own quest to find life and light in a world gone dark. The Electric Kingdom is a sweeping exploration of love, art, storytelling, eternal life, and above all, a testament to the notion that even in an exterminated world, one person might find beauty in another.
Brittney Morris’s debut, Slay, was absolutely brilliant (in fact, it is the only book I’ve been able to get my very-not-a-reader partner to read in the past 2 years). Her next novel, The Cost of Knowing, follows a Black teen with the power to see into the future who forsees his brother’s death.
Dear Martin meets They Both Die at the End in this gripping, evocative novel about a Black teen who has the power to see into the future, whose life turns upside down when he foresees his younger brother’s imminent death, from the acclaimed author of SLAY.
Sixteen-year-old Alex Rufus is trying his best. He tries to be the best employee he can be at the local ice cream shop; the best boyfriend he can be to his amazing girlfriend, Talia; the best protector he can be over his little brother, Isaiah. But as much as Alex tries, he often comes up short.
It’s hard to for him to be present when every time he touches an object or person, Alex sees into its future. When he touches a scoop, he has a vision of him using it to scoop ice cream. When he touches his car, he sees it years from now, totaled and underwater. When he touches Talia, he sees them at the precipice of breaking up, and that terrifies him. Alex feels these visions are a curse, distracting him, making him anxious and unable to live an ordinary life.
And when Alex touches a photo that gives him a vision of his brother’s imminent death, everything changes.
With Alex now in a race against time, death, and circumstances, he and Isaiah must grapple with their past, their future, and what it means to be a young Black man in America in the present.
Clues to the Universe reminds me of the kind of soft scifi we saw with K. Ancrum’s The Weight of the Stars, and I just love this genre!! Clues to the Universe follows Rosalind, a teen who is building a rocket with her dad before he dies, and Benjamin, who loves space comics and whose dad left years ago, when they become science partners and help each other with the unfinished business their dads left behind.
This #ownvoices debut about losing and finding family, forging unlikely friendships, and searching for answers to big questions will resonate with fans of Erin Entrada Kelly and Rebecca Stead.
The only thing Rosalind Ling Geraghty loves more than watching NASA launches with her dad is building rockets with him. When he dies unexpectedly, all Ro has left of him is an unfinished model rocket they had been working on together.
Benjamin Burns doesn’t like science, but he can’t get enough of Spacebound, a popular comic book series. When he finds a sketch that suggests that his dad created the comics, he’s thrilled. Too bad his dad walked out years ago, and Benji has no way to contact him.
Though Ro and Benji were only supposed to be science class partners, the pair become unlikely friends: Benji helps Ro finish her rocket, and Ro figures out a way to reunite Benji and his dad. But Benji hesitates, which infuriates Ro. Doesn’t he realize how much Ro wishes she could be in his place?
As the two face bullying, grief, and their own differences, Benji and Ro must try to piece together clues to some of the biggest questions in the universe.
Lord of the Flies but in space and written by an author of colour?! Yes that sounds absolutely incredible!! This space thriller is set in a future where the first daughter and 53 other teens escape a dying Earth as the only hope for humanity’s survival.
SEVEN WAYS WE LIE, NOTEWORTHY, and FINAL DRAFT author Riley Redgate’s ALONE OUT HERE, pitched as LORD OF THE FLIES in space, a thriller set in a future in which the first daughter and 53 other teens end up on the only ship escaping a dying Earth and must contend with being the last hope for humanity’s survival as they fight to preserve their own humanity
There is nothing I can say that will sounds more fun than what the author has on her website so, City of Shattered Light is about: Cyborgs! Guns! Flirting! 🔥 Matriarchal crime syndicates! Heists! Brain-tech interfaces! 🎮 Girls kissing girls! Girls kissing boys! 💋 Bass-pumping cyberpunk nightscapes! 🌃 Queer found family! Possessed murderous tech! 💀 Drugged bubblegum! Creepy labs! Organ piracy! ⚡️ Cute girls who are actually steel-and-silicon death machines! Gravity-shifting gladiatorial pits! 🌆154-hour nights!
As darkness closes in on the city of shattered light, an heiress and an outlaw must decide whether to fend for themselves or fight for each other.
As heiress to a powerful tech empire, seventeen-year-old Asa Almeida strives to prove she’s more than her manipulative father’s shadow. But when he uploads her rebellious sister’s mind to an experimental brain, Asa will do anything to save her sister from reprogramming—including fleeing her predetermined future with her sister’s digitized mind in tow. With a bounty on her head and a rogue A.I. hunting her, Asa’s getaway ship crash-lands in the worst possible place: the neon-drenched outlaw paradise, Requiem.
Gun-slinging smuggler Riven Hawthorne is determined to claw her way up Requiem’s underworld hierarchy. A runaway rich girl is exactly the bounty Riven needs—until a nasty computer virus spreads in Asa’s wake, causing a citywide blackout and tech quarantine. To get the payout for Asa and save Requiem from the monster in its circuits, Riven must team up with her captive.
Riven breaks skulls the way Asa breaks circuits, but their opponent is unlike anything they’ve ever seen. The A.I. exploits the girls’ darkest memories and deepest secrets, threatening to shatter the fragile alliance they’re both depending on. As one of Requiem’s 154-hour nights grows darker, the girls must decide whether to fend for themselves or fight for each other before Riven’s city and Asa’s sister are snuffed out forever.
Another of my most anticipated books of the year! Iron Widow is a polyamourous retelling of the rise to power of the only female Chinese emperor, Wu Zeitan, if you mixed it up with Pacific Rim and the Handmaid’s Tale.
Pacific Rim meets The Handmaid’s Tale in this blend of Chinese history and mecha science fiction for YA readers.
The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn’t matter that the girls die from the mental strain.
When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. But when she gets her vengeance, it becomes clear that she is an Iron Widow, a rare kind of female pilot who can sacrifice males to power up Chrysalises instead.
To tame her frightening yet valuable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest male pilot in Huaxia, yet feared and ostracized for killing his father and brothers. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will take over instead, then leverage their combined strength to force her society to stop failing its women and girls. Or die trying.SEE LESS
I always love a good time travel romance, I think there at least 3 on this list which is so exciting! For All Time follows two lovers repeating their story across hundreds of lifetimes: fall in love, fight to be with each other, die. But now it’s time to break the cycle!
Outlander meets The Sun Is Also a Star in this teen romance that follows two lovers fated to repeat their story across hundreds of lifetimes, who hope to break the cycle once and for all.
Tamar is a headstrong slave in Mali, a high school junior with a terminal illness on a last-chance trip, a young woman struggling for independence in a segregated train car steaming her toward an arranged marriage. She is a musician, a warrior, a survivor.
Fayard is a soldier that must obey all the rules set before him, a charming high school senior who wishes to give his high school sweetheart a promise ring, a lost young man who runs numbers for King Fats in Chicago. He is a con man, a pioneer, a hopeless romantic.
Together, Tamar and Fayard have lived a thousand lives, seen the world go through revolutions and civil wars, and have even watched humanity take to the stars. But in each life one thing remains the same: Tamar and Fayard fall in love. Tamar and Fayard fight to be with each other. Tamar and Fayard die. Over and over again until, perhaps at last, they learn what it will take to break the cycle.
We know almost nothing about Borderland, other than one line on Goodreads “A coming-of-age, YA eco-thriller about Indigenous land rights with sci-fi elements” and the fact this is a LoveOzYA book coming from an Indigenous author. Which, really, is exactly all I need to know to know I want to read this book!
Adult scifi is looking extremely good this year and starting this list off is The All-Consuming World, a book about a team of half-clone, half-machine, former criminals who get back together to solve the mystery of their last, disastrous mission. But they are up against the highly-evolved AI of the universe who will do anything it takes to stop the humans from being in control every again. Also it has sentient spaceships which is one of my favourite tropes in scifi!!
A diverse team of broken, diminished former criminals get back together to solve the mystery of their last, disastrous mission and to rescue a missing and much-changed comrade… but they’re not the only ones in pursuit of the secret at the heart of the planet Dimmuborgir. The highly-evolved AI of the universe have their own agenda and will do whatever it takes to keep humans from ever controlling the universe again. This band of dangerous women, half-clone and half-machine, must battle their own traumas and a universe of sapient ageships who want them dead, in order to settle their affairs once and for all.
Cassandra Khaw’s debut novel is a page-turning exploration of humans and machines that is perfect for readers of Ann Leckie, Ursula Le Guin, and Kameron Hurley.
I love a good scifi that tackles classic scifi tropes such as capitalism, AI, labour rights and big pharma, and that’s what Machinehood is giving us!! The blurb asks us “if we won’t see machines as human, will we instead see humans as machines?” and yes this that just sounds excellent and the exact type of shit I expect to see if capitalism continues for the next 100 years.
From the Hugo Award nominee S.B. Divya, Zero Dark Thirty meets The Social Network in this science fiction thriller about artificial intelligence, sentience, and labor rights in a near future dominated by the gig economy.
Welga Ramirez, executive bodyguard and ex-special forces, is about to retire early when her client is killed in front of her. It’s 2095 and people don’t usually die from violence. Humanity is entirely dependent on pills that not only help them stay alive, but allow them to compete with artificial intelligence in an increasingly competitive gig economy. Daily doses protect against designer diseases, flow enhances focus, zips and buffs enhance physical strength and speed, and juvers speed the healing process.
All that changes when Welga’s client is killed by The Machinehood, a new and mysterious terrorist group that has simultaneously attacked several major pill funders. The Machinehood operatives seem to be part human, part machine, something the world has never seen. They issue an ultimatum: stop all pill production in one week.
Global panic ensues as pill production slows and many become ill. Thousands destroy their bots in fear of a strong AI takeover. But the US government believes the Machinehood is a cover for an old enemy. One that Welga is uniquely qualified to fight.
Welga, determined to take down the Machinehood, is pulled back into intelligence work by the government that betrayed her. But who are the Machinehood and what do they really want?
A thrilling and thought-provoking novel that asks: if we won’t see machines as human, will we instead see humans as machines?
Yes I have read this and yes it is every bit as excellent as it sounds!! It was my last read of 2020 and of course made it onto my 2020 favourites list. It’s just so brilliantly fun and comforting: it felt like the book equivalent of a hug, all cosy and warm and soft with all your favourite tropes and the best kind of character development. But just as a note, there is a big content warning for past domestic abuse, so do be aware of that going in.
Ancillary Justice meets Red, White & Royal Blue in Everina Maxwell’s exciting debut.
While the Iskat Empire has long dominated the system through treaties and political alliances, several planets, including Thea, have begun to chafe under Iskat’s rule. When tragedy befalls Imperial Prince Taam, his Thean widower, Jainan, is rushed into an arranged marriage with Taam’s cousin, the disreputable Kiem, in a bid to keep the rising hostilities between the two worlds under control.
But when it comes to light that Prince Taam’s death may not have been an accident, and that Jainan himself may be a suspect, the unlikely pair must overcome their misgivings and learn to trust one another as they navigate the perils of the Iskat court, try to solve a murder, and prevent an interplanetary war… all while dealing with their growing feelings for each other.
I had such a great time reading Gailey’s novella Upright Women Wanted, a book about queer librarian spies fighting fascists, so I can’t wait to see how they handle something more scifiy. The Echo Wife is about a clone having an affair with her creator’s husband. But now the husband is dead and the two wives have to clean up the mess.
The Echo Wife is a non-stop thrill ride, perfect for readers of Big Little Lies and enthusiasts of “Killing Eve” and “Westworld”
Martine is a genetically cloned replica made from Evelyn Caldwell’s award-winning research. She’s patient and gentle and obedient. She’s everything Evelyn swore she’d never be. And she’s having an affair with Evelyn’s husband.
Now, the cheating bastard is dead, and the Caldwell wives have a mess to clean up. Good thing Evelyn Caldwell is used to getting her hands dirty.
Loving all these Black Mirror books coming in 2021!! Dark Lullaby combines this with the Handmaid’s tale and follows a mother who decides to have a child in a world where parenting standards are extremely heavily surveilled.
For fans of Black Mirror and The Handmaid’s Tale, in Dark Lullaby a mother desperately tries to keep her family together in a society where parenting standards are strictly monitored.
When Kit decides to have a child, she thinks she’s prepared. She knows how demanding Induction is. She’s seen children Extracted. But in a society where parenting is strictly monitored under the watchful gaze of OSIP (The Office of Standards in Parenting), she is forced to ask herself how far she will go to keep her family together.
It feels more rare to find romance in scifi than fantasy, which means I’m extra excited for this science fiction romance! It follows a young astronaut trying to solve the mystery of her uncle’s lost spaceship who falls in love with her uncle’s protégée.
A young, ambitious female astronaut’s life is upended by a fiery love affair that threatens the rescue of a lost crew in this brilliantly imagined novel in the tradition of Station Eleven and The Martian.
June is a brilliant but difficult girl with a gift for mechanical invention, who leaves home to begin a grueling astronaut training program. Six years later, she has gained a coveted post as an engineer on a space station, but is haunted by the mystery of Inquiry, a revolutionary spacecraft powered by her beloved late uncle’s fuel cells. The spacecraft went missing when June was twelve years old, and while the rest of the world has forgotten them, June alone has evidence that makes her believe the crew is still alive.
She seeks out James, her uncle’s former protégée, also brilliant, also difficult, who has been trying to discover why Inquiry’s fuel cells failed. James and June forge an intense intellectual bond that becomes an electric attraction. But the love that develops between them as they work to solve the fuel cell’s fatal flaw threatens to destroy everything they’ve worked so hard to create–and any chance of bringing the Inquiry crew home alive.
Equal parts gripping narrative of scientific discovery and charged love story, In the Quick is an exploration of the strengths and limits of human ability in the face of hardship and the costs of human ingenuity. At its beating heart are June and James, whose love for each other is eclipsed only by their drive to conquer the challenges of space travel.
It’s a new Becky Chambers!!! Queen of scifi, this is the fourth novel in Chambers’ exceedingly popular Wayfarer’s series. It’s bound to have Chambers’ trademark joy and hope in a genre that often tackles very bleak and pessimistic futures.
With no water, no air, and no native life, the planet Gora is unremarkable. The only thing it has going for it is a chance proximity to more popular worlds, making it a decent stopover for ships traveling between the wormholes that keep the Galactic Commons connected. If deep space is a highway, Gora is just your average truck stop.
At the Five-Hop One-Stop, long-haul spacers can stretch their legs (if they have legs, that is), and get fuel, transit permits, and assorted supplies. The Five-Hop is run by an enterprising alien and her sometimes helpful child, who work hard to provide a little piece of home to everyone passing through.
When a freak technological failure halts all traffic to and from Gora, three strangers—all different species with different aims—are thrown together at the Five-Hop. Grounded, with nothing to do but wait, the trio—an exiled artist with an appointment to keep, a cargo runner at a personal crossroads, and a mysterious individual doing her best to help those on the fringes—are compelled to confront where they’ve been, where they might go, and what they are, or could be, to each other.
First off, what a stunning cover?! It’s so pretty?! Second of all, The Swimmers is set in a world ravaged by global warming, and now has lots of new strange animals and settings, with humanity separated into those who live on the surface and those who live at the edge of the planet’s atmosphere.
A claustrophobic, literary dystopia set in the hot, luscious landscape of Andalusia from the author of The Golden Key.
After the ravages of global warming, this is place of deep jungles, strange animals, and new taxonomies. Social inequality has ravaged society, now divided into surface dwellers and people who live in the Upper Settlement, a ring perched at the edge of the planet’s atmosphere. Within the surface dwellers, further divisions occur: the techies are old families, connected to the engineer tradition, builders of the Barrier, a huge wall that keeps the plastic-polluted Ocean away. They possess a much higher status than the beanies, their servants.
The novel opens after the Delivery Act has decreed all surface humans are ‘equal’. Narrated by Pearl, a young techie with a thread of shuvani blood, she navigates the complex social hierarchies and monstrous, ever-changing landscape. But a radical attack close to home forces her to question what she knew about herself and the world around her.
The Effort sounds like the kind of scifi that really focuses on humanity and hope, which I think we all need a bit of right now! It follows a group of scientitsts studying a dark comet who have to come up with a plan to destroy the comet, the greatest threat the earth has ever seen, or accept the annihilation of humanity.
When dark comet UD3 was spotted near Jupiter’s orbit, its existence was largely ignored. But to individuals who knew better — scientists like Benjamin Schwartz, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies — the threat this eight-kilometer comet posed to the survival of the human race was unthinkable. The 150-million-year reign of the dinosaurs ended when an asteroid impact generated more than a billiontimes the energy of an atomic bomb.
What would happen to Earth’s seven billion inhabitants if a similar event were allowed to occur?
Ben and his indomitable girlfriend Amy Kowalski fly to South America to assemble an international counteraction team, whose notable recruits include Love Mwangi, a UN interpreter and nomad scholar, and Zhen Liu, an extraordinary engineer from China’s national space agency. At the same time, on board a polar icebreaker life continues under the looming shadow of comet UD3. Jack Campbell, a photographer for National Geographic, works to capture the beauty of the Arctic before it is gone forever. Gustavo Wayãpi, a Nobel Laureate poet from Brazil, struggles to accept the recent murder of his beloved twin brother. And Maya Gutiérrez, an impassioned marine biologist is — quite unexpectedly — falling in love for the first time.
Together, these men and women must fight to survive in an unknown future with no rules and nothing to be taken for granted. They have two choices: neutralize the greatest threat the world has ever seen (preferably before mass hysteria hits or world leaders declare World War III) or come to terms with the annihilation of humanity itself.
I have an ARC of this one waiting for me right now, better get my act together and read it!! Skyward Inn is about an inn in the middle of nowhere, removed from technology and politics. It’s a story about togetherness and community and belonging and sounds like it will be a beautiful and hopeful science fantasy novel.
This is a place where we can be alone, together.
Skyward Inn, on the moorlands of the Western Protectorate, is removed from modern technology and politics. Theirs is a quiet life – The Protectorate has stood apart from the coalition of world powers that has formed. Instead the inhabitants choose to live simply, many of them farming by day and drinking the local brew at night.
The co-owners of the inn are Jem and Isley. Jem, a veteran of the coalitions’ war on the perfect, peaceful planet of Qita, has a smile for everyone in the bar. Her partner Isley does his cooking in the kitchen and his brewing in the cellar. He’s Qitan, but it’s all right – the locals treat him like one of their own. They think they understand him, but it’s only Jem who knows his homeland well enough to recreate it in the stories she tells him at dawn.
Skyward Inn is Jamaica Inn by way of Ursula Le Guin, bringing the influences, too, of Angela Carter, Michel Faber and Jeff Vandermeer to create a fantastic story of love, belonging, and togetherness. Asking questions of ideas of the individual and the collective, of ownership and historical possession, and of the experience of being human, it is at once timeless and thoroughly of its time.
The legendary Casey McQuiston is here with time travel romance number 3 on this list!! Yes I love this trope, it’s the yearning that knowing the love is impossible that really gets me. One Last Stop is about a girl who meets another on the subway and falls for her. There’s just one problem: she’s displaced in time from the 1970s.
For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.
But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train.
Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August’s day when she needed it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things, after all.
Casey McQuiston’s One Last Stop is a magical, sexy, big-hearted romance where the impossible becomes possible as August does everything in her power to save the girl lost in time.
This is one of my favourite covers of 2021! I want to be the person on the cover so much. Persephone Stations is a space opera about a backwater planet ignored by the government, where a bar that caters to wannabe criminals is located, and the bar owner who seeks out the head of a criminal organisation to do a job for them.
Hugo award-nominated author Stina Leicht has created a take on space opera for fans of The Mandalorian and Cowboy Bebop in this high-stakes adventure.
Persephone Station, a seemingly backwater planet that has largely been ignored by the United Republic of Worlds becomes the focus for the Serrao-Orlov Corporation as the planet has a few secrets the corporation tenaciously wants to exploit.
Rosie—owner of Monk’s Bar, in the corporate town of West Brynner—caters to wannabe criminals and rich Earther tourists, of a sort, at the front bar. However, exactly two types of people drank at Monk’s back bar: members of a rather exclusive criminal class and those who sought to employ them.
Angel—ex-marine and head of a semi-organized band of beneficent criminals, wayward assassins, and washed up mercenaries with a penchant for doing the honorable thing—is asked to perform a job for Rosie. What this job reveals will affect Persephone and put Angel and her squad up against an army. Despite the odds, they are rearing for a fight with the Serrao-Orlov Corporation. For Angel, she knows that once honor is lost, there is no regaining it. That doesn’t mean she can’t damned well try.
A Memory Called Empire was one of the most unique, exciting and fresh science fictions I’ve ever read: part love letter to poetry, part murder mystery, part political thriller, part exploration of colonisation and imperialism. It was an absolute triumph of the genre and I am incredibly excited to read the sequel (and read it extremely soon because I have an ARC!!!)
An alien armada lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is running out of options.
In a desperate attempt at diplomacy with the mysterious invaders, the fleet captain has sent for a diplomatic envoy. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass—still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire—face the impossible task of trying to communicate with a hostile entity.
Whether they succeed or fail could change the fate of Teixcalaan forever.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built is the beginning of a new novella series for sci-fi legend Becky Chambers. Aiming to give hope for the future, A Psalm for the Wild-Built is set centuries after robots gained self-awareness and follows a tea monk who has a run in with a robot who won’t leave until they work out what people need.
It’s been centuries since the robots of Earth gained self-awareness and laid down their tools. Centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again. Centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.
One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of “what do people need?” is answered.
But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They’re going to need to ask it a lot.
Becky Chambers’ new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?
Coming from one of my favourite new publishers (Erewhon), The Unraveling is set in a future society where biotechnology has revolutionised gender – everyone can have multiple bodies! It follows a bioengineer and a child who accidentally end up in the centre of a scandalous art piece and unintentionally become icons for revolution. Give me all the scifis revolutionising gender please!! I NEED THEM ALL.
In a far-future society where biotechnology has revolutionized gender, young Fift must decide whether to conform or carve a new path.
In the distant future somewhere in the galaxy, a society has emerged where everyone has multiple bodies, cybernetics has abolished privacy, and individual and family success within the rigid social system is reliant upon instantaneous social approbation. Young Fift is an only child of the staid gender, struggling to maintain their position in the system while developing an intriguing friendship with the poorly-publicized bioengineer Shria–somewhat controversial, since Shria is bail-gendered. In time, Fift and Shria unintentionally wind up at the center of a scandalous art spectacle which turns into the early stages of a multi-layered revolution against their strict societal system. Suddenly they become celebrities and involuntary standard-bearers for the upheaval.
Fift is torn between the survival of Shria and the success of their family cohort; staying true to their feelings and caving under societal pressure. Whatever Fift decides will make a disproportionately huge impact on the future of the world. What’s a young staid to do when the whole world is watching?
Yes, Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro is back with a new book – the first since his win – and it sounds absolutely excellent! Klara and the Sun follows Klara, an Artificial Friend sitting in a shop and waiting for someone to choose her to take home. Look I’m sorry, but even this description makes me teary because WHY DOES NO ONE WANT HER?!
Klara and the Sun is a magnificent new novel from the Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro–author of Never Let Me Go and the Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day.
Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her.
Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?
Sarah Pinsker is the author of Nebula award-winning novel A Song for a New Day and her newest book sounds just as epic! We Are Satellites is a novel about a family divided by technology when their teenage son wants a new brain implant, but their teenage daughter rises up against the corporate tech powerhouse, pitting the family against one another.
From award-winning author Sarah Pinsker comes a novel about one family and the technology that divides them.
Everybody’s getting one.
Val and Julie just want what’s best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when teenage son David comes home one day asking for a Pilot, a new brain implant to help with school, they reluctantly agree. This is the future, after all.
Soon, Julie feels mounting pressure at work to get a Pilot to keep pace with her colleagues, leaving Val and Sophie part of the shrinking minority of people without the device.
Before long, the implications are clear, for the family and society: get a Pilot or get left behind. With government subsidies and no downside, why would anyone refuse? And how do you stop a technology once it’s everywhere? Those are the questions Sophie and her anti-Pilot movement rise up to answer, even if it puts them up against the Pilot’s powerful manufacturer and pits Sophie against the people she loves most.
Future Feeling sounds all kinds of weird and wonderful! It’s about a dog walker who tries to curse fellow trans man (and Instragram influencer) but accidentally curses a different trans man by sending him to the Shadowlands, an emotional landscape where trans people journey to achieve self-actualisation. Yes this sounds weird but it also sounds magnifcently wonderful and fun and very different!
An embittered dog walker obsessed with a social media influencer inadvertently puts a curse on a young man—and must adventure into mysterious dimension in order to save him—in this wildly inventive, delightfully subversive, genre-nonconforming debut novel about illusion, magic, technology, kinship, and the emergent future.
The year is 20__, and Penfield R. Henderson is in a rut. When he’s not walking dogs for cash or responding to booty calls from his B-list celebrity hookup, he’s holed up in his dingy Bushwick apartment obsessing over holograms of Aiden Chase, a fellow trans man and influencer documenting his much smoother transition into picture-perfect masculinity on the Gram. After an IRL encounter with Aiden leaves Pen feeling especially resentful, Pen enlists his roommates, the Witch and the Stoner-Hacker, to put their respective talents to use in hexing Aiden. Together, they gain access to Aiden’s social media account and post a picture of Pen’s aloe plant, Alice, tied to a curse:
Whosoever beholds the aloe will be pushed into the Shadowlands.
When the hex accidentally bypasses Aiden, sending another young trans man named Blithe to the Shadowlands (the dreaded emotional landscape through which every trans person must journey to achieve true self-actualization), the Rhiz (the quasi-benevolent big brother agency overseeing all trans matters) orders Pen and Aiden to team up and retrieve him. The two trace Blithe to a dilapidated motel in California and bring him back to New York, where they try to coax Blithe to stop speaking only in code and awkwardly try to pass on what little trans wisdom they possess. As the trio makes its way in a world that includes pitless avocados and subway cars that change color based on occupants’ collective moods but still casts judgment on anyone not perfectly straight, Pen starts to learn that sometimes a family isn’t just the people who birthed you.
Magnificently imagined, linguistically dazzling, and riotously fun, Future Feeling presents an alternate future in which advanced technology still can’t replace human connection but may give the trans community new ways to care for its own.
Another excellent novella coming from Tor.com!! And also, what a beautiful cover? That illustration is gorgeous! In the Watchful City is a scifi novella about a city that uses a living security network to watch over the city, with ‘extrasensory humans’. The novella follows one of these extrasensory humans as ae comes into contact with a mysterious visitor who carries a cabinet full of curiosities from around the world.
In the Watchful City explores borders, power, diaspora, and transformation in a mosaic novella that melds the futurism of Lavie Tidhar’s Central Station with the magical wonder of Catherynne M. Valente’s Palimpsest.
The city of Ora uses a complex living network to surveil its inhabitants and maintain order. Anima is one of the cloistered extrasensory humans tasked with watching over the city. Aer knowledge of the world begins and ends with what ae can see and experience through the living network, and ae takes pride and comfort in keeping Ora’s citizens safe from all harm.
All that changes when a mysterious visitor arrives enters the city carrying a cabinet of curiosities from around the world, with a story attached to each item. As Anima’s knowledge of aer world expands beyond the borders of Ora to places—and possibilities—ae never before imagined to exist, ae finds aerself asking a question that throws into doubt aer entire purpose: What good is a city if it can’t protect its people?
Nnedi Okorafor is another icon in the SFF community and she is back with a new novella set in a future time, about the adopted daughter of death who wanders with no one except for a fox companion, searching for the object that fell from the sky and gave her powers.
“She’s the adopted daughter of the Angel of Death. Beware of her. Mind her. Death guards her like one of its own.”
The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. From hereon in she would be known as Sankofa–a name that meant nothing to anyone but her, the only tie to her family and her past.
Her touch is death, and with a glance a town can fall. And she walks–alone, except for her fox companion–searching for the object that came from the sky and gave itself to her when the meteors fell and when she was yet unchanged; searching for answers.
But is there a greater purpose for Sankofa, now that Death is her constant companion?
This scifi historical thriller sounds absolutely fascinating. It follows a race of aliens who exist to make sure humans reach space. They will do anything in their power to do so, no matter the cost. A History of What Comes Next follows two of these aliens as they try to lure Wenher Von Braun away from the Nazi party and into the American rocket program, to ensure the space race continues.
Showing that truth is stranger than fiction, Sylvain Neuvel weaves a scfi thriller reminiscent of Blake Crouch and Andy Weir, blending a fast moving, darkly satirical look at 1940s rocketry with an exploration of the amorality of progress and the nature of violence in A History of What Comes Next.
Always run, never fight. Preserve the knowledge. Survive at all costs. Take them to the stars.
Over 99 identical generations, Mia’s family has shaped human history to push them to the stars, making brutal, wrenching choices and sacrificing countless lives. Her turn comes at the dawn of the age of rocketry. Her mission: to lure Wernher Von Braun away from the Nazi party and into the American rocket program, and secure the future of the space race.
But Mia’s family is not the only group pushing the levers of history: an even more ruthless enemy lurks behind the scenes.
A darkly satirical first contact thriller, as seen through the eyes of the women who make progress possible and the men who are determined to stop them…
Kali Wallace is the mind behind creepy space horror Salvation Day, and now she’s back with Dead Space, a scifi thriller about a murder on an asteroid mine. Bring on creepy space books!
An investigator must solve a brutal murder on a claustrophobic asteroid mine in this tense science fiction thriller from the author of Salvation Day.
Hester Marley used to have a plan for her life. But when a catastrophic attack left her injured, indebted, and stranded far from home, she was forced to take a dead-end security job with a powerful mining company in the asteroid belt. Now she spends her days investigating petty crimes to help her employer maximize its profits. She’s surprised to hear from an old friend and fellow victim of the terrorist attack that ruined her life–and that surprise quickly turns to suspicion when he claims to have discovered something shocking about their shared history and the tragedy that neither of them can leave behind.
Before Hester can learn more, her friend is violently murdered at a remote asteroid mine. Hester joins the investigation to find the truth, both about her friend’s death and the information he believed he had uncovered. But catching a killer is only the beginning of Hester’s worries, and she soon realizes that everything she learns about her friend, his fellow miners, and the outpost they call home brings her closer to revealing secrets that very powerful and very dangerous people would rather keep hidden in the depths of space.
Unity is the debut novel from queer, trans woman Elly Bang and it sounds like an absolute brilliant piece of work! It’s a philosophical scifi thriller about Danae, a person who was once joined with a collective inside her body. She tries to escape the city, where she is a tech servant, with her lover and an ex-mercenary guide but is hunted by a warlord.
Evoking the gritty cyberpunk of Mad Max and the fluid idealism of Sense8, Unity is a spectacular new re-envisioning of humanity. Breakout author Elly Bangs has created an expressive, philosophical, science-fiction thriller that expands upon consciousness itself.
Danae is not only herself. She is concealing a connection to a grieving collective inside of her body. But while she labors as a tech servant in the dangerous underwater enclave of Bloom City, her fractured self cannot mend.
In a desperate escape, Danae and her lover Naoto hire the enigmatic ex-mercenary Alexei to guide them out of the imploding city.
But for Danae to reunify, the three new fugitives will have to flee across the otherworldly beauty of the postapocalyptic Southwest. Meanwhile, Danae’s warlord enemy, the Duke, and a strange new foe, the Borrower, already seek them at any price.
This one also featured on my 21 most anticipated books of 2021 because it looks incredible! This trans scifi is about three women trying to escape their pasts, including one who is trying to escape eternal damnation, and has an absolutely stellar review in from scifi legend Charlie Jane Anders, who described it as hopeful and kind which sounds like the exact type of scifi we need in the current world!
Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in this defiantly joyful adventure set in California’s San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-baked donuts.
Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six.
When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka’s ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She’s found her final candidate.
But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn’t have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan’s kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul’s worth. And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline.
As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe is found.
We don’t know much about Losing Gravity, but it’s by scifi legend Kameron Hurley and so I don’t really need to know any more than that!
Hugo Award-winning author Kameron Hurley’s LOSING GRAVITY, pitched as Killing Eve meets Die Hard, in space, to Joe Monti at Saga Press, in a very nice deal, for publication in 2021.
And there you have it: a list of the science fiction novels I’m looking forward to reading this year (let’s all just ignore for the moment that there is no way I can read this many books okay?) What science fiction books are you looking forward to reading in 2021? Let me know in the comments!
Anxious Nachos 