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Marie Brennan’s Turning Darkness Into Light is a delightful fantasy of manners, the heir to the award-winning A Natural History of Dragons series.
As the granddaughter of Isabella Camherst, renowned dragon scholar, Audrey Camherst has always known she would want to make her scholarly mark.
When Lord Gleinheigh recruits Audrey to decipher a series of ancient tablets holding the secrets of the ancient Draconean civilization, she has no idea that her research will plunge her into an intricate conspiracy. Alongside dearest childhood friend and fellow archeologist Kudshayn, Audrey must find proof before it’s too late.
Avast, me hearties! It’s Alex, with the last newsletter they’ll be sending you from Dublin, Ireland. It’s been a massively busy and fun WorldCon, with only a few hiccups. First up, we’ve got news on the Hugo awards!
Congratulations, Hugo Award Winners!
- Best Novel: The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
- Best Novella: Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
- Best Novelette: If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again by Zen Cho
- Best Short Story: A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies by Alix E. Harrow
- Best Series: Wayfarers by Becky Chambers (The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, A Closed and Common Orbit, and Record of a Spaceborn Few)
- Best Related Work: Archive of Our Own
- Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book: Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
- John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer: Jeannette Ng (author of Under the Pendulum Sun) (Also, you ought to read her acceptance speech.)
- For the list of winners in the rest of the categories, see the Hugos site!
- Next year’s Hugos will take place in Wellington, New Zealand at ConZealand, the 78th World Science Fiction Convention.
New Releases
The Cruel Stars by John Birmingham – The Sturm, a society of human “species purists” were thought to have died out long ago. But they’ve returned with a vengeance, and it’s up to a small band of flawed and reluctant heroes, all of them survivors of the Sturm attack, to rise up and resist.
The Trojan War Museum and Other Stories by Ayse Papatya Bucak – A short story collection that explores the fuzzy border between historical memory and myth.
News and Views
An excellent meta-read from Laurie Penny about nerds gaining power in pop culture (and fanfic).
Art Spiegelman (creator of the Pulitzer-prize winning graphic novel Maus) wrote an essay for the intro to a Marvel book about the golden age of comics; Marvel rejected it because it referred to Donald Trump. If you want to read the full essay, the Guardian’s posted it.
George R.R. Martin talks about the Game of Thrones TV show ending in an interview with the Guardian.
An autistic person writes about how Good Omens made them feel represented.
From io9: 30 very good sci-fi dogs.
Stephen Colbert has a Tolkien-off with Lee Pace.
#BoycottMulan started after Liu Yifei, star of the upcoming live-action Mulan, spoke in support of the Hong Kong police.
You had me at “intersectional feminist vampire movie.”
Haley Atwell talks a bit about Endgame.
We might be losing our most-consumed banana species to a fungus. (Bananas are fascinating.)
From the Department of “Why This?”: Colonies of aggressive, social spiders boom after a hurricane
See you, space pirates. You can find all of the books recommended in this newsletter on a handy Goodreads shelf. If you’d like to know more about my secret plans to dominate the seas and skies, you can catch me over at my personal site.