Category: Swords and Spaceships

This is a collection of stories by Janelle Monáe and a collection of collaborators expanding upon her landmark album Dirty Computer, telling the stories of a world where thought and memory can be controlled or erased by a few elites who believe they have the right to control the fate of everyone.

Sequel to The Gilded Ones. Six months after freeing the goddesses and discovering the truth of her identity, Deka faces a kingdom at war with itself and a people who call her and those like her monster. And the battle has only begun…

An aspiring journalist named Jamal Lawson heads to Baltimore to document a protest against police brutality after the murder of a Black man. But Baltimore implements a new safety protocol: a dome that surrounds the city and enforces a militarized shutdown. No one can leave. Jamal must find what allies he can in the increasingly violent and oppressive lockdown if he wants to free the city… and survive.

Sequel to Legendborn. Bree has become much more than she never expected: medium, bloodcrafter, scion. She’s infiltrated the Legendborn Order and discovered her own power. But now she must use this power to take her place in the ancient war between the demons and the Order.

It’s taken generations for the Muungano Empire, a coalition of city-states that stretches from original Earth to Titan, to free itself from the endless wars and oppression of Earth and build into a true utopia. But the powers remaining behind on Earth aren’t interested in letting them thrive and will stop at nothing to destroy everything they’ve built.

The sequel to Black Leopard, Red Wolf. After her clashes with Tracker in the previous book, the 177-year-old Moon Witch Sogolon has her own tale to tell.

Ikenna, the granddaughter of a murdered Legatus, seeks justice and revenge for his death. In order to do this, she must become one of the Praetorian Guard, and to achieve that she must first pass the trials, a brutal contest that kills three quarters of those who attempt it. Beyond that, her half-Khanaian heritage and her gender direct far more prejudice upon her head. But truth–and revenge–will not wait.

Sequel to Black Sun. After the Crow God’s eclipse, the great city of Tova has been shattered, and a comet that heralds death is about to make its appearance in the skies. Ordinary people and living avatars struggle for survival and self as enemies no longer held by empire prepare for war.

Perilous “Perry” Graves is a failed magician who makes his home in the gorgeous, wonder-filled city of Nola, where music is magic and haints dance in the night. But nine songs of power have escaped the city’s heart, and if they aren’t recovered, Nola will fall. It’s up to Perry and his sister to find the songs and save Nola.

The climate apocalypse isn’t rising sea levels or heatwaves; it comes with overgrown plant life filling the air with so much pollen that no one can breathe it. Izabel lives in a world with people living in a series of airtight domes, one where humanity is finally flourishing again and there is safety and prosperity. Then an unknown person begins slashing domes open, letting the outside air in to kill the residents–a new kind of serial killer. And Izabel’s daughter begins having strange sleep-conversations about the murders.

The titular book is a 17th century manual on sex magic, which just might be the most powerful occult book ever written… if it exists. Lily, a former novelist who has consigned herself to loneliness after suffering a tragedy, sets out to find this book under the promise of how much money she’ll be paid if she can. The world’s wealthiest people might wish to fulfill their desires with black magic… but it’s Lily’s desire to join their ranks.

Emrael Ire is an ordinary man who wants only to be a weapons master… but his final test becomes surviving an insurrection that ends with his brother enslaved. In so doing, he discovers a powerful, latent magic within himself, a skill he never wanted or imagined he might have. His one stroke of luck is his War Master tutor is also an undercover mage, and she might be able to teach him the skills he needs if he’s to rescue his brother and defeat the Fallen God.

Five former Navy SEALS, each with a different background, are brought into a special ops unit and dispatched to the Caucasus to stop a terrorist threat. When their mission goes awry, they’re offered a bargain by the literal Devil, who offers them mystical powers that will allow them to send evil people directly to Hell for his enjoyment. But no gift from the Devil comes without strings, and each member of the the new Devil’s Quintet must struggle against the corruption of their powers or face damnation themselves.

The events of this book collapse in on the inflection point of the winter solstice, which is when a god may be reborn and an empire might fall. And as one might expect of a winter solstice, it’s cold and snow in the canyon that’s the center of that empire. I know I mention this book a lot, but that’s because it’s so freaking good.

With the Crescent Empire about to fall to a revolution, five sisters are going to determine its future. Each one has her own life and desires, but the Great Thinking Machine that may or may not be powered by evil magic has no time for their pedestrian lives. The whole setting is historical fantasy Russia, so expect it to be cold.

Apollo Kagwa and his wife Emma are supposed to have a happily ever after with the birth of their new baby, but then Emma insists the baby is not actually hers, but a changeling… A story that’s in a lot of ways about post-partum depression and the difficulties of being a new parent–but also about an ancestral curse all the way from Norway laid on a family that really does not deserve to have bad crap happen to them. There’s not actually snow until the end of the book, but the whole thing feels like winter, emotionally.

This book is split roughly in half, with part of it describing the City, which is a boundless afterlife that’s neither heaven nor hell, a place where the people remain as long as there is someone alive who remembers them. The other half is about an employee of Coca-Cola who is dispatched to Antarctica to research if they can use the ice melting courtesy of climate change in their products. Things go very wrong for her, with a deadly virus that was probably engineered in a lab sweeping across the world right as she arrives and leaving her stranded.

A very dysfunctional crew of humans and their robot servants are sent by a corporation to explore an ice planet where some very strange things are happening. This book swings between the claustrophobia of being trapped on a ship with a bunch of people who don’t like each other to being trapped on a hostile ball of ice and snow where everything is going wrong. And then things get werid.

Alizeh appears to be an unimportant and disposable servant–but she is the long-lost heir to a Jinn kingdom, hiding in plain sight for her own safety in the kingdom of a human. The crown prince, Kamran, already worries about the prophecies of his king’s death… but little does he suspect that a servant girl in his own house will be at the center of the coming storm.

Chelsea Martin is a housewife in an outwardly perfect marriage that is in fact a nightmare of domestic abuse perpetrated by her husband David. When a strange condition of unknown origin sweeps across the nation, causing anyone infected to explode into fits of animalistic rage and attack anyone nearby, Chelsea sees in it the opportunity to save herself and her daughter from the monster that’s been living with them all along.

The Republic believes that it’s finally got the Nihil marauders beaten… until they seem to attack the Galactic Core itself, causing destruction on Corellia. Jedi Masters Cohmac Vitus and Kantam Sy and their Padawans are sent to investigate, though none of them are in the best mental place to be doing so, dealing with the after effect of months of danger and trauma. What they uncover shows the attack is not a lone incident, but part of a greater design aimed right at the Jedi.

Caiden has spent the last ten years constantly on the run, keeping his Graven ship, the Azura, out of the hands of Threi. His life has almost become a routine… until his childhood friend he’s long believed was dead reappears, and lures him into a far more deadly game of keep-away with Threi’s sister, Abriss. If he wants to survive and fly free, his will have to unlock the Azura’s full power… and confront his own origins.

Octavia “Tavi” Zarola is the dedicated leader of a crew of bounty hunters, a found family she’ll do anything to keep together. Strapped for cash and at the end of her rope, she’s forced to take a job from her sworn enemy, a ruthless former general named Torran Fletcher. But with the amount of money on offer, it comes with a big catch–Torran and his own crew are going to be joining up with Tavi. As sparks fly between Tavi and Torran, they also uncover a plot that threatens the delicate peace between the humans and the alien Valoffs.

A monk confronted by not one, not two, but three hungry tigers needs to buy time if they don’t want to be eaten (and they don’t), so they get the tigers talking, telling the story of a female tiger that fell in love with a human woman. The monk and the tigers each have their own version of the story, but when there are disagreements… it’s probably better to let the tigers win.

Tiger spirits… in space. A young tiger spirit joins the space forces because they want to captain a battle cruiser some day like their uncle. But just as they’re accepted into those ranks, that uncle is declared a traitor for supposedly stealing the fabled Dragon Pearl. The only possible course of action is to clear their uncle’s name… but there’s a special investigator on the case that seems intent on making matters even worse.

Thanh is the princess of a kingdom that hasn’t been violently conquered, but is in danger of being slowly crushed under the weight of an empire that will colonize them all the same. She spent her childhood “visiting” that empire, where she fell in love with the ruler’s daughter in a romance that’s both deeply unhealthy and definitely not acceptable to her own mother. But she’s made a friend along the way… a fire spirit, who loves her even more fiercely.

An alternate history in which the Black Death is far more devastating to Europe than it already was, killing 99% of people there. As with all KSR novels, the scope is an epic expanse of time… and this involves reincarnation, with the characters moving through the eras. And at one point, one of them gets reincarnated as a tiger.

Admittedly not a tiger-focused book, but it’s in the title, and it’s a fun book. The story draws inspiration from both Indian history and Hindu mythology, and follows an assassin named Esha, who all others fear as the Viper, who’s given an important mission: taking down a general who contributed to the royal coup that took everything from her.

Barsakayaa Shefali isn’t literally the daughter of a tiger, but the story behind how she got that moniker is an epic of war and prophecy and sapphic love that then continues on for two more books. She and the love of her life are the only hope for stopping the incursion of demons that would be happy to consume the world.

Kass and Evie haven’t been on speaking terms since the incident… which involved their dad and brother disappear on a camping trip. Dad was found wandering around a few days later, lost and claiming he’d been abducted by aliens; their brother never showed back up at all. Evie has dedicated herself to finding Jakob and become a UFO conspiracy nut, while Kass has given up on him as a runaway burnout. And then Jakob suddenly returns, talking about an intergalactic war…

Judah finds herself wandering in an unknown forest beyond the Wall after leaping from the top of the castle tower, choosing freedom and possible death over betrayal. Alone for the first time in her life, she has a chance to try to figure out who she is and what she wants… but she won’t be free for long. Within her lies the key to unlocking the power long trapped in the world, and there are many who wish to find her and use her.

In the 2050s, those with privilege and means have left the Earth behind for the comfortable orbiting space colonies. Those left behind must struggle to survive in a world where, one piece at a time, everything good they could call their own is being sent up to the colonies, one piece at a time.

A new retelling of The Nutcracker, in which a young woman named Marietta Stelle wishes only to be a ballerina, but will have to give up that dream to marry at the behest of her family. But when Dr. Drosselmeier, a mysterious toymaker, moves into the townhouse nextdoor, he brings hope and dark magic in equal measure. He builds her a set for her final performance that will lead her to a realm she could never have imagined.

Shade Nox is a lone witch among wizards, branded an abomination and a criminal by the Brotherhood church. In defiance, she wields her obsidian blades and wears her tattoos openly as she protects her fellow outcasts. With the land around them growing ever more unstable, she resolves to raise a Veil to protect her people, something no one’s been able to do in the last century. And the church swears to destroy her before she has a chance to complete her spell.

Derek lives and breathes his job at LitenVärld to the extent that in his off hours he resides in a shipping container at the back of the massive store’s parking lot–and this is all he remembers. Then one day he takes his first ever sick day, an unheard of thing for a star employee like himself. Suddenly he finds he must prove his loyalty to the company by doing a special overnight inventory shift… with four other employees named Derek who all look like him. (Full disclosure: Nino and I have the same agent.)

The plague birds are hated and feared in the world that remains after civilization has collapsed; they are the merging of gene-modded human and AI, and they pass judgment on the those deemed criminal by the benevolent AI that watches over humanity. After seeing her mother killed by a plague bird as a child, Crista must become one of those feared monsters if she is to save her father and her home village.

Bug is a self-declared “fast friend” who enters the life of the book’s young, deaf narrator without warning and seems to know far too much about both him and his family. But after continuously being misunderstood by the world at large and getting in trouble at school, at least at first, Bug’s help is a welcome relief… even if it’s not strictly legal.

When the ship Ragtime arrives in the Lagos system, first mate Michelle Campion wakes from hibernation to discover that some of her fellow travelers will never join her at their new home. She puts out a distress call, and investigator Rasheed Fin answers, determined to find the cause of these deaths. But its no simple system malfunction–and the repercussions of his discoveries will resonate as far as Earth itself.

A lone gunman called the Stranger embarks on a quest to save his son from another world, striding across the plane known as the Escapement, a place populated by strange and terrible versions of the boy’s favorite things. The Stranger must make it past the Mountains of Darkness if he wants a chance of success, but his time is growing short…

After being injured in an attack, Hester Marley finds herself stranded far from home and deep in debt. She has no choice but to take a security job with an asteroid mining company, where her main task is to help her employer maximize profits rather than provide any actual safety. Then she’s contacted by an old friend who was hurt in the same terrorist attack as her… and then that old friend gets murdered. Determined to find the killer, Hester soon realizes that the situation is far worse and more dangerous than she could have imagined.

Fellian has spent her life as an indentured servant; she’s a Lamplighter, a mage who can use her magic to provide illumination for others. She’s freed from servitude by a group of rebel Monarchists; in exchange they want her to help them rescue their compatriots who have been trapped underground in a mine. But there’s a conspiracy against them, to kill the latest royal child and destroy the Monarchist, and Fellian must find her way out of the conflict if she’s to preserve her new freedom–and her life.

Zora is a young Black woman who flees to New Orleans after a tragic accident that she caused with her magic. She wants nothing more than to disappear into the city–and avoid her aunt and her terrible cousins. But when she’s given the chance to perform at a jazz club, she can’t pass it up… and then she falls in love with the club’s white pianist, who has his own magic. They must navigate a love that’s forbidden by segregation and the complicated history they discover that exists between their families if their love is to survive.

A collection of linked stories about the Arctic plague, an ancient virus unwittingly released on the world by the melting permafrost. The plague reshapes Earth and humanity for generations to come, and this book follows a cast of linked characters across the world and across years, exploring hope and resilience in the face of tragedy.

Sunny Nwazue has been on a long journey to control her magical powers and find a balance in her life between the many worlds she lives in–America and Nigeria, the physical world and the juju world, human and spirit. Now she is called upon to put all she has learned to the test, to embark on a dangerous quest to stop the world from being destroyed.

Robots have “deleted” most of the humans on the last interstellar colony ship, leaving only 22 remaining, all of them strangely immortal children. There are 12 seats on the lander that will go down to the monster-filled planet to start humanity’s reboot. But how to figure out which 12 should be chosen, when the robots want only to kill each other and the humans insist on asking a lot of useless questions instead of learning what they need to do…

Celestia and Izara Da Malena are orphans who have only each other, the daughters of impoverished aristocracy. To keep their land, a failing rainforest acreage, Izara uses a spell she doesn’t fully understand to summon the local river goddess and ask for a rich husband for Celestia. But there is a cost for such favors, and five years late, the goddess returns to collect–and her price will set the sisters against their emperor, the husband the goddess sent to Celestia, and an even more powerful god.

Lin Vu has made a place for herself in the underworld and made her home in the 36 Streets of Hanoi despite being an outsider everywhere she goes. When the English creator of the immersive game Fat Victory, a simulation of the US-Vietnam War, comes to Hanoi searching for clues about his friend’s murder, Lin is drawn a web of conspiracies and power and she must choose between family, country, and gang.

The tea is right in the title of the book, though what you might not know is that the tea master of the title is a sentient space ship who, Watson-like in many ways, joins up with the detective to investigate a murder. I know I’ve mentioned this book many a time, but it’s because I love it. I’m a sucker for both Sherlock Holmes pastiches and space opera.

This is actually the second book in this space opera series (the first is Ancillary Justice), but a huge chunk of the plot turns on the planet that produces the most tea for the Radch–an empire for which tea is a huge part of its ceremonial culture–and political machinations that are connected to it. And this, too, has a sentient spaceship as a main character… one that happens to be trapped in the body of an “ancillary.”

The opening scene of this fun novella takes place in a tea house, and will make you think of every kung fu movie you’ve ever seen where there’s a fight in a tea house. Found family, wuxia, gender critique, zany goings-on… there is everything I love in this little book and I will never shut up about it.

The start of a massive and long-running series about a human diplomat moving in an alien world. The whole series has a lot of fascinating politics and sociology in it… and a lot of the diplomacy takes place over slightly less formal teas or highly formal dinners. Tea and food both serve as a really neat window into character and culture. (Convergence is probably the most tea-heavy of the books, but it’s not a good starting place.)

Ah, my favorite sad gay elf book. This is sort of a sequel to The Goblin Emperor, though I think you can get away without reading that book since this one is about Thara Celehar, the aforementioned sad gay elf. Anyway, the point here is that in addition to being sad and solving mysteries, Thara drinks a LOT of tea and frequents a lot of tea houses for plot reasons, and it’s such a fun cultural note that makes the world feel very lived-in.

The kingdom of Zavonia is on the brink of war, held by a usurper king after the rightful king is assassinated and his queen goes missing. The man who set this political cataclysm off, an assassin named Lind, must right the wrong he did and turn on the one who hired him. He can’t do it alone, but he has help: the captain of the guard who was framed for the murder, and a healer witch charged with a task by the ghost of the murdered king himself.

Rue finds herself locked in a basement prison with no memory of how she got there. Worse, she has no magic and her allies are nowhere to be found. But she’s a girl from the East Row, and that means she doesn’t give up–she breaks out. Once she finds her friends, she must return the magic the Chancellor stole from her father’s people–and figure out how to be the leader they deserve.

Xingyin has grown up in solitude on the moon, the daughter of the goddess who was exiled there after stealing the elixir of immortality from the Celestial Emperor. But when Xingyin’s magic manifests, she can no longer hide in peace; she’s forced to flee to the Celestial Kingdom in disguise. There, she learns how to use her magic alongside the crown prince, whom she falls in love with, before embarking on a dangerous quest to save her mother that will end in challenging the Celestial Emperor himself.

Sparkle Dungeon is a VR game that combines medieval settings and raves, and Isobel is its queen by grace of her dance moves. Her skill and reputation earns her the opportunity to lean “power morphemes”–words that can warp reality, used by a powerful cabal to control California. But she’s also come to the attention of a resistance movement of magical anarchists. Isobel doesn’t have much time to choose a side, because far more alien threats are coming from other dimensions…

Fi and Shane are a treasure-hunting team of badass women, following a map to what they think will be riches. Then Fi pricks her finger on a bone spindle, which causes her to be hunted by the ghost of Briar Rose, a prince under a sleeping curse. Now it’s up to Shane and Fi to break the curse on his kingdom while a witch tries to steal Shane’s heart and Fi tries to avoid falling in love with the prince.