Happy Friday, shipmates! It’s Friday, and I’m here with some pre-orders for your perusal and a few links you might find fun. I hope it’s been a good week out there for you–hopefully with a lot less wind than we’ve had here, shaking the house–and you’ve got a relaxing weekend with lots of reading time coming at you. Stay safe out there, space pirates, and I’ll see you on Tuesday!
Let’s make the world a better place, together. Here’s somewhere to start: NDN Collective and Jane’s Due Process
News and Views
Eugen Bacon: Finding Me: Towards Self-Actualization in Writing
GRRM talks about The Rise of the Dragon
The Tolkien estate recently made a bunch of his paintings and drawings available for online viewing!
Shin Godzilla Turned a Monstrous Eye on Bureaucracy in the Wake of Fukushima
Morena Baccarin Reveals That Online Blowback Led to Her De-Fridging in Deadpool 2
On Book Riot
In this week’s SFF Yeah! Podcast, we revisit speculative poetry
Are Novelizations Worth Reading?
Win a copy of The Bone Orchard by Sara A. Mueller
This month you can enter to win an iPad Mini, a Banned Books bundle, a Kindle Oasis, $200 at The Ripped Bodice, and a 1-year subscription to Book of the Month.
Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!
Free Association Friday: Another Pre-Orderpalooza
March is women’s history month, so how about some upcoming SFF books by women to pre-order for this year? Show them some love!
Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel (April 26)
Kaikeyi is the only daughter of the kingdom of Kekaya, and she was raised on tales of the gods and their fantastic powers that allowed them to vanquish evil. But the stories she hears don’t match the reality she sees, where her mother is exiled and Kaikeyi herself is nothing but a pawn to be married off. She turns to the books that taught her the stories and discovers a magic that allows her to transform from a princess to a warrior–and queen.
Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse (April 19)
Sequel to Black Sun.
With the city of Tova shattered by the Crow God’s eclipse and the social order falling to pieces, Xiala and the former Priest of Knives must find a way to survive as allies–and try to help two living avatars find their way to remain human.
The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah (May 17)
Loulie al-Nazari is a criminal who sells illegal magic, guarded by a jinn. After she inadvertently saves the life of a cowardly prince, his father blackmails her into finding a magical lamp that will sacrifice all of the jinn to revive the barren land. She and her bodyguard must survive an epic quest–and at the end waits more truth than Loulie could ever imagine.
The Oleander Sword by Tasha Suri (August 16)
Sequel to The Jasmine Throne.
Malini has been declared the rightful empress and is determined to claim that throne, but deposing her brother will be no easy task, no matter how great the army that follows her. And Priya wants nothing more than to free her country from that empire’s rule, even if her soul is intertwined with Malini’s. Their coming together may be the only way to save both of their people, though it will cost them dearly.
The Final Strife by Saara El-Arifi (June 21)
Sylah grew up in the resistance, training for the day she would lead her people to topple the ruling class… until her entire family was murdered. But when she meets Anoor, daughter of the most powerful ruler in the empire, the heat that sparks between them is undeniable. When the empire begins a new series of trial by combat that will find its newest cohort of leaders, they team up with Hassa, a girl who has survived by being socially invisible, to set events in motion that will burn the entire order to the ground.
Babel by R.F. Kuang (August 23)
After his family dies to cholera in Canton, Robin Swift comes to London at the behest of a mysterious professor. There, his days are devoted to the linguistic studies that will get him into Oxford University’s Royal Institute of Translation, which is also called Babel. But beyond languages, Babel is a center for the magic that’s made the British Empire a world-dominating power. Soon Robin realizes that his residence in this academic utopia comes at the cost of betraying his motherland.
See you, space pirates. 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.