Happy Tuesday, shipmates! It’s Alex with a couple new releases for you, some more angry feminist reads, and… honestly, the coolest thing I’ve seen on Etsy to date. I hope you all had a lovely weekend! I got to relax with family and eat a lot of potato salad, which is really all I could ask for these days. 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
HAL 9000 Prop Motion-Activated Sound and Night Light by ComputerRobot
I kind of randomly found this while looking for something else but? This is so cool??? It’s a prop recreation of the HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it’s got… a motion activated light, and it can charge your cell phone, and it plays stuff via bluetooth? Very cool. $570
New Releases
Of Charms, Ghosts, and Grievances by Aliette de Bodard
When dragon prince Thuan and his demon husband Asmodeus go on a family holiday, they don’t expect to encounter anything more challenging than babysitting and the usual family politics. What they get instead is a hungry ghost haunting a ruined shrine, who is the only witness to a murder that happened there. It’s up to the husband team to solve the mystery–and hopefully keep everyone alive through it.
Daughter of Redwinter by Ed McDonald
Raine has spent her life hiding, lying, and on the run, trying to keep her ability to see and speak with the dead hidden—because if she doesn’t, she’ll be killed for it. But one of the few times she tries to help someone, aiding an injured woman she finds in the snow, may well be her doom. The woman she helped is on the run, herself, from the monastery of Redwinter, and from the warrior magicians who live there, who will stop at nothing to reclaim what she’s stolen.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
Remember how we headed into the Fourth of July weekend on a tide of angry feminist scifi? Well, that seems like the right way to leave the holiday behind us, too.
The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz
In the year 2022, abortion has been banned in most states… but the timeline wasn’t supposed to be like this. Time travel exists in this world, though with its own particular rules, and there’s good evidence that someone has been making edits to restructure society to their liking. And Tess, one of a group of supposed historians, is bent on making their own edits to make the future a better, safer place for women—and everyone else.
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
In a post-apocalyptic Africa still rocked by genocide, a woman raped by a general seeks death in the desert and instead gives birth to an angry baby girl. Onyesonwu, whose name means “Who fears death?” soon manifests a unique magic that allows her to visit the spirit realm and sends her on a journey across her land where she will grapple with history, spirituality, and her own nature.
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.