Happy Tuesday, shipmates! It’s Alex, with your first round of August 9 new releases and a couple of cyberpunk books that are new to me and sound pretty darn cool. I’m in an extra cyberpunk mood today, perhaps, because I watched Bullet Train… and while not exactly cyberpunk, it definitely had the vibe. (And it, too, was very fun.) Stay safe out there, space pirates, and I’ll see you on Friday!
Let’s make the world a better place, together. Here’s somewhere to start: NDN Collective and Jane’s Due Process.
Bookish Goods
Cyberpunk Mask by SCLMROshop
Well, a few newsletters ago, I found some extremely cool goth/fantasy masks. Here’s one from the cybpunk side of the spectrum and dang, it looks neat. $170
New Releases
The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu
There is a prophecy of a chosen one, who will defeat the Eternal Khan…but the prophecy is wrong. The anointed hero, Jian, raised in luxury, is startlingly useless. Instead, a ban of unlikely heroes has to come together to accomplish this momentous task…and Jian has to figure out how to be a hero in his own way rather than how prophecy dictates.
The Awoken by Katelyn Monroe Howes
Alabine Rivers, a young woman who discovers that she has terminal cancer, decides to take her shot at survival using cryogenics. It works, and she’s brought back a century later, into a world where the resurrection of the dead like her has become a violent philosophical battle. Awoken like Alabine are declared illegal and can be shot on sight, and the Resurrectionists are a secret militia fighting for their rights.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
Inspired by that hecka cool mask I found on Etsy, here are a couple of cyberpunk book recommendations that are new to me, so they might be new to you!
Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan translated by Ken Liu
Mimi is a migrant worker on Silicon Isle off the coast of China, a polluted wasteland where all electronics are sent to be recycled. But this island of wreckage is about to become the locus of a war — between classes, between local gangs, between international bodies, and between humanity’s past and future.
Trouble and Her Friends by Melissa Scott
Trouble, legal identity India Carless, has retired from her life as a hacker and settled in an artist co-op…only to find she’s being actively hunted by the authorities again when someone has stolen her hacking name and is committing crimes under her identity. She has one last fight that she has to win if she not only wants to go back to peaceful retirement…but if she wants to stay alive at all.
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.