Sponsored by Mariner Books.
Celebrate Hobbit Day on September 22 by reading this great modern classic and the prelude to The Lord of the Rings. Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep to whisk him away on an adventure. They have launched a plot to raid the treasure hoard guarded by Smaug the Magnificent, a large and dangerous dragon. Bilbo reluctantly joins their quest, unaware that on his journey will encounter both a magic ring and a frightening creature known as Gollum.
Happy Friday, shipmates! It’s Alex, with some news links for you to click, and some books to check out now that National Hispanic Heritage Month has gotten going. We’ve had a week of clear air where I can see all the way to the mountains in Colorado, and I didn’t know how oppressive and small the world felt from all the wildfire smoke until it had gone away. By the way, I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Meet Me in Another Life by Catriona Silvey, and I’m enjoying the heck out of it. Kristin Atherton is doing a great narration–so check it out if that sounds interesting. Stay safe out there, space pirates, and I’ll see you on Tuesday!
Let’s make the world a better place, together. Here’s somewhere to start: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/, anti-asianviolenceresources.carrd.co, and Jane’s Due Process
News and Views
N.K. Jemisin is one of Time’s 100 most influential people of 2021!
JMS seems to be teasing us about something…
Amazon is adapting Charlie Jane Anders’s Victories Greater Than Death. It’s also working on a live-action She-Ra series?
The Incredible Shrinking Man Saw Beyond the Material Façade of Post-War Prosperity
Trailer for the Hawkeye Disney+ show
Becoming a Saint in Shadow and Bone
SFF eBook Deals
Bacchanal by Veronica G. Henry for $1.99
The First Protectors by Victor Godinez for $1.99
The Vine Witch by Luanne G. Smith for $1.99
On Book Riot
This week’s SFF Yeah! was about some serendipitous reads.
20 Must-Read Space Fantasy Books
Top 18 Books Like Shatter Me to Obsess Over
It’s the Twilight Renaissance, and We’re Just Living in It
Enter to win a copy of Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson.
This month you can enter to win a QWERKY keyboard.
Free Association Friday: Hispanic SFF
September is a lot of different kinds of national months, but my favorite is National Hispanic Heritage Month, which has no time for your petty calendars and takes half of September and half of October in a National Month power move that no one before or since has dared attempt. So let’s check out some SFF by Hispanic authors!
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina by Zoraida Córdova
This one may look very familiar to you, because it only came out a week and a half ago, but it is on this list because you bet your butt it is good. The Montoya family is one surrounded by inexplicable magic and mysteries they know better than to ask about. But when Orquídea Divina, the matriarch who refused to ever leave their home, even for weddings and baptisms, invites them to her own funeral, rather than answers or a direct inheritance, her transformation leaves them only with more questions. After seven years, this inheritance has manifested differently for each of her descendants… and put them in the line of fire of a mysterious enemy that seems determined to pick them off, one by one.
Ink by Sabrina Vourvoulias
In a near-future America that labors under ever-more draconian border policies, immigrants and their children, whether documented or not, naturalized citizen or not, are tattooed to mark their status and tracked relentlessly by the machine of the state. In desperation, the “inked” form their own alliances and try to claim their home with ingenuity and resilience.
When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore
I love everything I’ve ever read that Anna-Marie McLemore has written, so it was hard to pick one book to put on this list. But ultimately, I picked this multi-award-winning book about two best friends who each have a strange magic to them and the four beautiful sisters even odder than them who are rumored to be witches who want their magic for themselves.
The Merry Maids by Stefanie Contreras
The Merry Maids are an elite black-ops team who work undercover to clean up the messes created by the Order all across the galaxy. With her newly honed abilities in telekinesis and movement, Alyvia has only just joined the team when her crew is sent to pick up the pieces of a dangerous artifact, scattered across the stars. But the person who hid them is still around, and they’ll do anything to destroy the artifact before Alyvia can complete it.
Death Song of the Dragón Chicxulub by R. Ch. Garcia
La Muerta Blanca is a mysterious dragon-like ghostly creature that’s been stalking Central America since the days of the Aztecs, eating hearts and spreading terror. Now, Miguel Reilly comes to modern-day New Mexico and falls in with a shaman named Tomás, who shows him that he’s not “pure” Irish-American while trying to train this innocent nerd into a dragonslayer. Along his journey, Miguel meets a Maya med student named Maritza who has survived a brush with the spectral monster and come away with her own ambitions to slay it. Náhuatl codices lead the two to Chichén Itzá for a final, fantastical battle to slay a dragon and find themselves.
...and Other Disasters by Malka Older
A short fiction and poetry collection from the author of Infomocracy, which includes AI, the anthropology of a dying Earth, and a corps of fighting midwives.
Awakening Arte by Bernie Anés Paz
A clanless young man hopes to escape life as an outcast by standing before the Eldest Throne so he can become an awakened guardian of humanity. But when he finally achieves that dream, he finds himself only with a fraction of the powers he should have been granted, not yet truly immortal. However, after the life he’s led, he’s used to doing more with less, and he isn’t going to let anything stop his ascension, even if he has to find his own path to do it.
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.