SFF Cures for Summer Boredom

Bored with quasi-European epic fantasy? This is the start of a series that’s got it all–magic, gods, tons of politics, family drama, giant animals that people ride around on, and a deep history that unfolds without requiring infodumps… and it’s all set in a fantasy Mesoamerica.

(Also check out The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter, which is African-inspired epic fantasy with dragons.)

Bored with fated lovers who always seem to be a heterosexual couple? Here’s Barsalayaa Shefali, a horse-riding female warrior, and O Shizuka, a divine empress, and they have a big destiny together that may be leading them to either their deaths or the godhood they must attain to save the world.

Bored with fantasy that front and centers fighters? This one’s about a scholar and a politician trying to maintain their places in a crumbling empire… then you throw a mage who shouldn’t exist into the mix, and they’re all sent on dark journey through some even darker history–and deadly secrets.

Bored with the AI always being the bad guy? This starts a series about an embodied AI who takes on an empire in her quest for revenge–and then justice.

Also, Martha Wells’s Murderbot series, starting with All Systems Red, scratches this itch nicely as well… and gives us an AI with some severe social anxiety.

Bored with dystopias? Much of Kim Stanley Robinson’s work is quasi-utopic, though in a way that’s very uniquely his. Rather than trying to imagine a future where technology runs everything and resources are abundant, he looks for the ways people can aim for utopia with work and managing scarce resources.

Bored with chosen ones? Here’s a thief who finds out that he might be the missing son of a prince, but rather than being swept into an epic quest, he’s drafted into his ruthless family’s political machinations. Worse, if he’s got a great destiny at all, it’s not that he’ll save the world — he’s going to be the one to destroy it.