Swords and Spaceships for June 15

The debut short fiction collection from the author of Monstress, filled with dark magic and dangerous women. Stories of witches, body-stealing sorceresses, bodyguards, mystical warriors, and princesses in stories of love and revenge. The collection is made of short stories and a full-length novella.

Myrra is a contract worker who was born into servitude, her labor owed to whoever is the highest bidder when her contract comes up. In fifty years, she’ll be free; in the meantime, she works. But when the family that most recently bought her contract is found dead, she gets her freedom early in the most technical sense–but she must take their orphaned daughter and run from the terrible secret that killed them.

Voya has waited years for her Calling, the trial she must pass as a witch to come into her power, and when her time comes the unthinkable happens–she fails. Then an ancestor of hers offers an unprecedented second chance at the Calling…but the price this time will be sacrificing her first love, and if she fails her entire family will lose their magic.

Earth 1000 years from now is covered with miles-thick glaciers, its oceans buried in green slime, all of these the results of attempts to ameliorate climate change gone wrong. The humans who saw the disaster coming tried to save Earth by recreating the species that dominated the previous ice ages. Their descendants try to survive in this impossibly hostile place, surrounded by the remnants of a civilization they’ve long forgotten–including the last true god, a quantum computer.

A small percentage of the population in Lisbon are found to be “Gifted,” meaning they have powers beyond the ordinary, ones that invite stigma and suspicion. When a man is found dead on a train, killed by being repeatedly thrown against the glass, a bizarre suicide may actually be a murder. It’s up to a Gifted inspector to solve this case.

Duke Kordas Valdemar rules a small duchy in the Eastern Empire, but he knows that the peaceful existence for him and his people will not last for long. He quietly begins gathering magicians against the day that he and his people might have to escape the empire’s tyranny as the emperor’s own mages delve more deeply into blood magic and Abyssal deals. One of Valdemar’s mages figures out how to gate his people away–just in time for the duke to be summoned to the capital, where he will have to put on the performance of his life while he buys time for his people to flee.