Stolen Destinies, Last-Chance Reincarnation, an Interstellar War, and Other New Releases

When a bandit attack leaves an eighth-born son destined for greatness and his second-born sister destined for nothing orphaned, it’s another trick of fate that the son dies. The daughter takes on her brother’s name, Zhu, and in an attempt to escape her own fate, enters a monastery masquerading as a male novice. But when the monastery, too, is destroyed, Zhu must fully take her brother’s fate of greatness and make it her own.

The planet Ileri is about to join the Commonwealth when a government minister is assassinated, threatening to spark an interstellar war. A disparate team must come together to solve this mystery and avert the possible destruction of their planet: a private investigator named Noo Okereke, a spy named Meiko Ogawa, and a police chief named Toiwa.

The angel Prapura kicks a formless soul into the body of fourteen-year-old Makoto Kobayashi, who has just died by suicide. This is the soul’s second and last chance if he doesn’t want to be entirely removed from the cycle of rebirth. He needs to remember the worst mistake of his past life while living Makoto’s life and understanding the circumstances of his death.

The Savages that the empire culls from its cities and uses as shock troops have risen in rebellion and started their own war. Leading the legion is Evie, called the Sparrow General. Along with Dyeawan, a strategist operating in the shadows of imperial government; Lexi, the head of a guild who finds herself at the center of a political power play; and Taru, who has just been conscripted into a new legion of Savages, she will decide the fate of an empire and a world. (Full disclosure: Matt and I have the same agent.)

Bréone Hemmerli is a diplomat negotiating what might be humanity’s most important alliance if we wish to survive a world devastated by climate change: peace with an alien race represented by a being named Tura. But Bréone’s memory is failing badly with age, and humanity’s time grows short.