Happy Tuesday, shipmates! It’s Alex, and I’m here with new releases for this last week of June, and to tell you how much I love Judy I. Lin’s books. Because that’s what I did over the weekend when it was horrifically hot: hid in the basement and read three absolutely delightful novels. I definitely recommend it as a way to stay cool in the summer, assuming you have a basement available and have forged a peace with your uncomfortably large basement spiders. Stay safe out there, space pirates, and I’ll see you on Friday!
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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
Painted Edge: A Magic Steeped in Poison Hardcover by LiteraryDreamer
I truly love the artists who take hardcovers of books and add their own designs to the edges to tie the front and back covers together. It’s just so beautiful! $80
New Releases
Festival & Game of the Worlds by César Aira translated by Katherine Silver
This is a book made of two smaller books. In Festival, a sci-fi filmmaker named Alex Steryx comes to a film festival as its star guest…and brings his 90-plus-year-old mother with him as his plus one. Things only get more surreal from there. In Game of the Worlds, a middle-aged dad in the far future is grappling with something all parents understand: a complete inability to grasp the fad technology his kids are into. Except this particular internal cultural crisis may result in a world-ending chain of logic.
Sleep Like Death by Kalynn Bayron
Eve is a princess with a unique magical talent: she can conjure weapons from nature. And she has one task, which is to destroy the Knight who has terrorized Queen’s Bridge for far too long. But the conflict between her mother and the Knight is not as simple as she was raised to believe, and it will be up to her to decide which side she will fight for.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
I have been on a Judy I. Lin kick recently, so I am taking this corner of my newsletter to scream about her books. Because I can.
One thing I do want to call out specifically for her duology and the standalone novel is that they’re in fantasy worlds that are built on the foundation that queer people exist and their relationships are accepted. It was a delight to encounter that casual world-building detail, and it made me feel so welcomed as a reader.
Song of the Six Realms
This is an absolutely delightful take on a gothic romance. It’s got everything: mysterious nobleman, crumbling manor, suspiciously missing former betrothed. And here, the magic is based on the main character’s skills at playing the qín, something that hit me straight in the heart because I play the koto. (Which is the Japanese equivalent…ish.) Anyway, I mainlined this book and heartily recommend it.
A Magic Steeped in Poison
And of course, do not miss the sequel, A Venom Dark and Sweet.
I picked this book up because I loved Song of the Six Realms so dang much, and I was not disappointed. A country girl with a special kind of magic that’s based on making tea goes to the capital city to compete to become the Emperor’s tea master, in hopes it will enable her to save the life of her sister, who is slowly dying from having partaken in one of the bricks of mysteriously poisoned tea that have been spread across the empire. Dark political plots are pretty obviously involved from the start, but then the gods wade in…
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.