Happy Tuesday, shipmates. And look at that — Tra la, it’s May! (The lovely month when everyone goes blissfully astray, if memory serves.) It’s Alex, and I’ve got your first couple of new releases for the month, and…hey, new month, time to return to the happy theme of dragon books. Here’s hoping this month brings us all great weather for planting our gardens and enjoying a book or two outside with a cold drink of our choosing. Stay safe out there, space pirates, and I’ll see you on Friday!
Book Riot has a new podcast for you to check out if you’re looking for more bookish content in your life. First Edition will include interviews, lists, rankings, retrospectives, recommendations, and much more, featuring people who know and love books. You can subscribe to First Edition on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your podcatcher of choice.
Let’s make the world a better place, together. Here’s somewhere to start: NDN Collective and Jane’s Due Process.
Bookish Goods
Book Dragon Canvas Basket by missbohemia
If you, like me, have run out of shelf space or just want a nice storage solution for your stack of books you keep by the couch, this cute little canvas basket is perfect. And it calls out the books as part of your hoard, besides…$20.
New Releases
Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
America’s private prison industry is becoming ever more dominant, and now it’s profiting even more with a controversial yet popular, new version of gladiators: Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, AKA CAPE. In CAPE, prisoners fight in death matches for the chance of a freedom those who run the prisons have no intention of ever truly allowing them.
The Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
Violet Sorrengail, small and brittle-boned, was destined for a life as a scribe, living quietly among the books. But her mother, the commanding general, decrees instead she will take her chances at becoming a dragon rider. But while the dragons themselves are dangerous, her fellow cadets are even more so — many would happily kill her (or see to an “accident”) to better their own chances of bonding to a dragon. If Violet can survive the dragons and her peers, there’s still an ever-worsening war to face — one she is beginning to suspect leadership is lying to them all about.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
Did one of those summaries say “dragon riders”? I will take any excuse to recommend more books about dragons! In this case, it’s dragons disguising themselves as humans…
Talon by Julie Kagawa
Ember Hill is a dragon hatchling, though she’s ready to take her rightful place in the Talon organization — if she can prove that she can blend in with humans and hide her draconic nature. But her adventure as a “human” teenager is cut short when she meets up with a young dragonslayer from the secret Order of St. George, whose assignment is quite specifically hunting her down.
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
There is nominally peace between humans and dragons in the kingdom of Goredd; the dragons, mathematical geniuses who can also burn down the cities if they feel like it, walk among humans, looking just like them, as tensions simmer below the surface. But the newest member of the court, a musician named Seraphina, has a secret of her own that she guards with her life — a secret that becomes increasingly difficult to hide as she’s drawn into the investigation of a brutal murder of a member of the royal family.
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.