Happy Tuesday, shipmates! It’s Alex, with a double dose of new releases, half of which are sequels. This week, I’m excited and thankful because I found a nice carpenter to make new steps in my garage — my joints are happier already. Did I expect as a teenager that I’d become the kind of person who is super excited about having new steps? No, but that’s how life is. At least I’m still super excited about books! Stay safe out there, space pirates, and I’ll see you on Friday!
2024 is the tenth year of the Read Harder Challenge! Join us as we make our way through 24 tasks meant to expand our reading horizons and diversify our TBRs. To get book recommendations for each task, sign up for the Read Harder newsletter. We’ll also keep you informed about other cool reading challenges, readathons, and more across the bookish internet. If you become a paid subscriber, you get even more recommendations plus community features, where you can connect with a community of passionate, like-minded readers in a cozy and supportive corner of the internet. Sign up today!
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
Fae Crown by PernCirclets
Since we’re talking a dark fae book this week, I went looking for something that had that flavor, and what I found was this gorgeous circlet! $89
New Releases
Exordia by Seth Dickinson
Anna is a survivor of a genocide, a refugee-turned-office worker who one day has a close encounter of the third kind…with a multi-headed, serpent-like alien named Ssrin. But rather than a happy occasion, their meeting reveals a danger that threatens the entire universe, and Anna must join a small team of people from many walks of life to investigate this unknowable horror and the mysterious broadcast that heralds it.
Faebound by Saara El-Arifi
Yeeran is a warrior in the elven army and knows only that she will die as she has lived: on the battlefield. Her sister, Lettle, is a diviner who searches for prophecies of a better future. But when Yeeran is exiled after a mistake, Lettle is forced out with her into the wilderness, where they find a danger both impossible and wondrous: the fae court.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
There are several sequels coming out this week, and I wanted to call your attention to two of them!
Kinning by Nisi Shawl
Sequel to Everfair
Everfair may now be at peace, but the heroes of our story are certainly not done with their journeys. Tink and Bee-Lung travel the world in an aircanoe, following a fungus whose spores cause empathic links — and will spread, they hope, understanding. Princess Mwadi and Prince Ilunga have returned from Egypt to vie for rule after their father abdicates…while being manipulated all the while by their mother.
Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett
Sequel to Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries
Emily has learned many secrets of the fae, from her journeys and from Wendell Bambleby, who is secretly an exiled faerie king. She’s not ready to accept his proposal of marriage; she’d rather work on her maps of the fae lands, but then he gets her in trouble again, putting her in the line of fire of assassins sent by his mother. And that’s just the start…
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.