Happy Friday, shipmates! It’s Alex, and I’ve got some new releases for you and some SFF in translation! It’s a chilly week here, with the weather swinging wildly, so my new fireplace is getting a workout, and I went looking for something cold-weather appropriate from Etsy. Hope you enjoy! Stay safe out there, space pirates, and I’ll see you on Tuesday!
It’s happening, readers — we’re bringing paperbacks! Whether you (or a reader you know and love) hate carrying around bulky hardcovers, you’re on a budget, you want a wider range of recommendations or all of the above, you can now get a paperback subscription from TBR, curated just for you by one of our Bibliologists. The holidays are here, and we’ve got three different levels for gifting (to yourself or others) to suit every budget. Get all the details at mytbr.co.
Let’s make the world a better place, together. Here are two places to start: Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, which provides medical and humanitarian relief to children in the Middle East regardless of nationality, religion, or political affiliation; and Ernesto’s Sanctuary, a cat sanctuary and animal rescue in Syria that is near and dear to my heart.
Bookish Goods
UNnatural Species – Arctic Snow Eater by WhiteOakCreationsPA
I love it when people go speculative with their art in a really neat way. This creator made up a series of fantastical animals (along with scientific names!) while practicing a new felting technique. This happy little guy is an “Arctic snow eater (Arcticum nixcomedentis).” $35
New Releases
Where the Dead Wait by Ally Wilkes
This is a polar gothic (is there any other kind of genre set at the north or south pole?) about William Day, whose previous expedition ended inevitably in cannibalism. Thirteen years later, he goes looking for his once second-in-command, who has gone missing in the Arctic, taking it as a chance for redemption. But what’s waiting for him is more than cold and bad memories…
Descendants of Fire & Water by Didi Anofienem
In an alternate Africa that was never colonized nor subjected to the traumas of the transatlantic slave trade, Essien is the only girl in a family with five boys, raised in a village where women are bred to bear children and bow to the whims of their husbands. But when in a dream one night she is led by an akukoifo to a legendary river, she emerges from the other side with superhuman powers that allow her to overpower any man — and become the first woman to join her land’s military to defend her family. But there’s more to it than woman-turned-soldier…she might well be the goddess her land has been waiting for.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
Seeing new works of speculative fiction get translated into other languages always makes me happy because it means we’re getting to share stories more broadly. And it makes me even happier when I see works from non-English-speaking authors get translated into English because, selfishly, it means I get to read them…but also, it takes another little chip out of our cultural hegemony. Here are two recently translated works!
They Will Dream in the Garden by Gabriela Damián Miravete, translated by Adrian Demopulos
This book is about the unsettling experience of existing as a woman in Mexico, which takes fantastical and surreal turns from flowers that sprout from the earth and offer cosmic consciousness to those who pluck them to a state-controlled memorial to victims of femicide that’s run by a guardian who would make it a laboratory.
The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild by Mathias Énard, translated by Frank Wynne
An anthropology student comes to a village in the marshlands of western France, determined to understand its culture so he can write his thesis. What he doesn’t know is that Death is quite literal as a being and that once a year, there’s a three-day feast where Death takes up a temporary truce with the living, and the gravediggers take a break to celebrate.
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.
