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Perfect for fans of Victoria Aveyard and Holly Black, The Kinder Poison is an enthralling fantasy adventure that follows a teenage girl chosen to be the human sacrifice in a deadly game between three heirs who will do anything for the crown. Zahru has long dreamed of leaving the kingdom of Orkena and having the kinds of adventures she’s only ever heard about in stories. But as a lowly Whisperer, her power to commune with animals means that her place is serving in the royal stables until the day her magic runs dry. Now Zahru’s only hope for survival hinges on the impossible: somehow figuring out how to overcome the most dangerous people in the world.
Avast, shipmates. Wow, what a decade this week has been, huh? It’s Captain Alex, and I’ve got some news items and books that involve cats. Because it’s been a week and I really like cats. Hope you’re staying cool or warm, whichever is appropriate to your environment–and that you’re staying safe.
Thing that made me happy this week: Change.org petition to rename Columbus, OH to FLAVORTOWN
Looking for non-book things you can do to help in the quest for justice? blacklivesmatter.card.co and The Okra Project.
News and Views
Cover reveal for Premee Mohamed’s A Broken Darkness, sequel to Beneath the Rising.
Shatter the Sky by Rebecca Kim Wells won the 2019 Bisexual Book Award for SFF.
Amazon picked its best books of 2020 so far. The reviewers at Tor.com have also picked theirs.
Star Trek compound of skincare ingredient?
Orlando Jones returns to the Black Girls Nerds podcast
GRRM mentioning The Winds of Winter over at his Not a Blog
Six word stories at Wired: a sci-fi apocalypse with a happy ending
On Book Riot
6 strange tales for strange times
15 fascinating books like Dune
Journey to new worlds this summer with a middle grade fantasy series
Enter before the end of the month and you could win a 1-year subscription to Audible or a $250 Barnes and Noble gift card.
Free Association Friday: CATS
Look, it’s been a week, and I’m mentally exhausted, so how about we just talk about some SFF books that have cats in them. Because I love cats, and cats are good. Even when they’re bad.
Speaking of cats, File 770 has an entire tag that’s nothing but sleepy cats in proximity to SFF novels.
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami – I don’t think I get to expound on my love for Haruki Murakami often enough in this space, since he’s often borderline as far as actually being SFF. There’s six cats in this book, and half the chapters are the story of a young man who can communicate with cats after being rendered unconscious as a child by a mysterious flash of light. So as an adult, he just finds lost cats.
Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett is our first introduction to Greebo, who is most definitely the Best Worst Cat of all time. Greebo is to all appearances a foul-tempered, evil, one-eyed old tom cat, but Granny Weatherwax knows the truth: he is in fact a Good. A Very Good, really. Greebo is a recurring character in the Discworld series. As he should be.
Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes – Captain Eva Innocente has to do a lot of really dangerous and unpleasant things to try to pay the ransom for her sister after she gets kidnapped by the shadowy syndicate known as the Fridge. One of these things involves a shipment of psychic cats. This goes just about as well as you think.
Tailchaser’s Song by Tad Williams – I honestly don’t go for animal POV books all that much–they’re just not really my thing–but I make an exception for this one. It’s from the viewpoint of feral cats, who have their own mythologies and legends and culture. And look, one of the cats is named Eatbugs.
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune – This book features a total cat diva named Calliope, the companion of one of the main characters, a case worker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth.
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi – One of my favorite things about the fantasy world these books occupy is that everyone rides around on giant cats. How freaking cool is that?
Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold – This is actually my absolute favorite of the Vorkosigan Saga novels for a number of reasons that I cannot get into without spoiling it. But I can say that this book also introduces a recurrent character: Zap the Cat, a stray that takes possession of Miles’s house because he makes the mistake of feeding her (he’s lonely and needs friends, so you can’t blame him) and goes on to have a lot of kittens over the rest of the series.
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente – Features a cat along for the ride when two musicians get sort of but not really abducted by space aliens so they can play in a music contest in an attempt to save the world. The cat, notably, would happily give up India to the aliens to save its own skin, which is notably why we don’t give cats those kind of options.
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.