Author: Alex Acks

The greatest weapon of Huaxia are the Chrysalises, giant transforming robots used to battle the aliens that attack from beyond the Great Wall. They are piloted by a male and female pair… but the girl often dies from the mental strain sustained during battle. Zetian offers herself up as a pilot at eighteen, not because she wants to fight, but because she wants to kill the male ace pilot who is responsible for her sister’s death–and she gains her vengeance by killing them through their psychic link, becoming an Iron Widow. The next pilot sent to her is supposed to tame her, but Zetian has tasted power, and she will survive.

Wallace Price is dead, but he hasn’t really lived much of the life he’s departed. When a reaper comes to his funeral to collect him, he doesn’t go to heaven or hell, but rather to a tea shop run by a man named Hugo, who moonlights as they ferryman for souls like Wallace’s. Hugo tries to help Wallace ready himself to cross over and live some of the life he missed… but when the mysterious Manager shows up and gives Wallace a one week ultimatum, he has to try to live a whole life in seven days.

The Earth has been largely emptied of human inhabitants thanks to a series of environmental disasters and roving AI armies. Now cut off from the scattered colonies of humanity by the Interdiction Zone, it’s a treasure trove of priceless artifacts for the greedy and desperate, who don’t mind facing the wrath of the tyrannical Sol Commonwealth government. The crew of the Arcus are just those sorts of people, but when they make it to Earth, they’ll find out conditions are nothing like what they’ve been told.

The crew has fractured in the wake of Séverin’s apparent betrayal, leaving Enrique, Hypnos, and Zofia to search for their friend through the haunted waterways of Venice. As they search, Séverin must cater to the deranged Patriarch to buy time so he can find the location of the temple where he will play the Divine Lyre and bring his desires to fruition–and offer him divinity at a terrible price.

The Commonwealth was once ruled by shapeshifting monsters who fueled their magic with the souls of their human subjects. These evils were defeated and entombed and became legend… but now a Warlord wants to disturb a shapeshifter’s tomb to wake them once again. With the Warlord comes a crew of dungeon delvers… and if the world is unlucky, they’ll find what they’re looking for.

A collection of traditional stories retold with a twist for our modern times by Soman Chainani and illustrated by Julia Iredale.

Penador is a kingdom where what we’d think of as technology is fueled wholly by magic, making the guilds of mages as powerful as the king. But even the greatest mages fear Rosalind Featherstone, the Gutter Mage. Roz has been hired to find the missing son of Lord Edmund, following a trail that leads her to an old enemy and a deadly plot that could kill thousands and destroy the nation.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

A trinity of reincarnated souls orbit and interweave with each other in stories told thousands of years apart, but all in the same location — a cave in the jungle of Belize. The main characters include heirs to the throne of the Mayan kingdom, a young American woman who has gone to the jungle to discover herself, and a charismatic but unscrupulous person vying for the leadership of a new religion after Earth has been devastated by climate change.

Kai-Fu Lee is the former president of Google China; he’s teamed up with novelist Chen Quifan to imagine what AI might be like twenty years in the future and how it will have changed our world and society.

In this midwestern gothic, the Lyons family lives and endures in the ruined neighborhood called the Bramble Patch, surviving the privations of poverty, racism, and the literally ghoulish rule of Barghest, the local underworld kingpin. As the neighborhood and its town fall fully into decay, they learn the truth of an old saying: These bones are gonna rise again.

Dare to Know is a company that has invented a unique technology: they can predict anyone’s death accurately down to the second The narrator of the book is the company’s best salesman, and he’s forecasted his own death in violation of ever company rule because his life is in the crapper and he doesn’t care any more. Then he discovers a problem: he was supposed to die 23 minutes ago, and he definitely is still alive.

In an unnamed slum in a city in Argentina, a young woman finds herself compelled to start eating earth, an act that gives her visions of lost lives — including that of her own mother. Horrified by her visions, she keeps her ability to herself…until she befriends a police officer and word of he abilities begins to spread. Soon, many people are coming to her, desperate to learn what has happened to their loved ones.

Mordew is a sea-battered city, and God lays dead in its catacombs, used for sustenance and magical power by the mysterious Master of Mordew. Nathan is a young boy who lives in the slums of the city, until he is one day sold to the Master of Mordew by his desperate mother. But Nathan has a power greater than the God-eating Master, if only he can figure out how to harness it.

The first in the Chronicles of the Wolf-Queen series, which I remember originally being called Chronicles of the Bitch Queen from the title character’s line: “They called me the Bitch Queen, the she-wolf, because I murdered a man and exiled my king the night before they crowned me.” That is one heck of an introduction for a queen, and it tells you just who you are going to be dealing with.

Yeine Darr isn’t actually a queen yet, but she’s in competition with two of her cousins to ascend to the throne — if she survives the absolutely brutal, back-stabbing power struggle that’s about to happen. And that’s not even touching the gods held captive in the court of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, gods to whom her fate is tied.

The queen of the title isn’t the main character of the book, but her life and death loom large over it. Her king claims she was assassinated; her people know the truth, that he caused her to disappear. When a young resistance fighter finds her long-lost diary, her words and life from beyond the grave spark may spark a necessary revolution.

Sun is the daughter of the queen-marshal who expelled the invaders to their systems and rebuilt Chaonia into a republic to be feared and respected. Now Sun is struggling to follow in her mother’s footsteps and come into her own while navigating the politics of a court who would like to see her removed as heir… or maybe just dead.

The colonizer king of the islands of Hans Lollik decides that he will choose his successor from among the noble families, and that gives Sigourney Rose her opportunity to gain her revenge on him for the massacre of her family–and if she survives, take the throne as queen.

In a retelling of King Lear, three queens vie for the crown of Innis Lear: Gaela, Regan, and Elia, the commander, the manipulator, and the priest. Each has a claim to the throne and thirst for the power and magic that flows through Innis Lear. Each will do anything wrest it from the mad, murderous king. Only one will win.

Eva and Isa are sisters who must battle to the death to see which will be the queen to rule over Myre, a land forged with bloody conquest where only the most ruthless ruler can hope to survive. But before their duel is to take place, Eva is attacked by an assassin — one that wasn’t sent by Isa. As more enemies circle, Eva will soon be forced to choose between survival and the love she still feels for her sister.

Maya is a member of the infamous Dirty Dozen, a group of criminals that operated all over the galaxy before being destroyed in one last job that went terribly wrong. She’s lived countless lives, resurrected over and over again in cyborg bodies. Now the broken remnants of the old crew are getting back together to try to solve the disaster of their last mission–but they’re not the only ones in pursuit of that dangerous secret.

If you didn’t know that William Gibson wrote a screenplay for Alien 3 that was never actually filmed (we got a very different movie), now you do. And it’s been adapted into a novel by Pat Cadigan for your reading pleasure, an authorized fix-it fic where Ripley, Hicks, and Newt face a very different fate.

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.

Riya–not her real name–has been on the run from the Guildmaster who rules all five kingdoms of Thamorr for six years. Every time she tries to settle down and rebuild her life, his servants find her again and she’s forced to run. She’s tired of running… and as powerful as he is, any man can be defeated. With a team of miscreants, smugglers, and thieves, Riya plans to strike at his stronghold and take back her freedom–if she can do so before her selfish allies betray her.

Laina gets tragic news one October morning: Boston police have shot and killed her brother. But soon, this horror reveals something far stranger: monsters are real. And they’re coming out of the shadows now, looking for safety. This shift in the social fabric of the world leads to strife and protests. But the one question no one seems to be asking as society reshapes itself is: what has frightened the monsters so badly that they came out of the dark?

The Escapement is a reality different from our own, and through it rides a lone gunman called the Stranger, on a desperate quest to save his son from a parallel world. The shifting landscape is filled with dangerous versions of things his son loves: clowns, battles, storms, stone giants, cowboys. As he struggles through this shifting landscape toward the Mountains of Darkness, time is running short.

Iris is used to being an object of curiosity in Victorian London; she’s an African tightrope dancer. But while her audience focuses on her looks, her true strangeness is hidden: she cannot die. With no memories of her past and this unnatural power, Iris is obsessed with learning who she actually is. As if her life isn’t complicated enough, she meets Adam Temple of the Enlightenment Committee, who tells her that the world is ending, and they’re looking for a leader in the upcoming apocalypse. It could be her–and she could learn about her past–if she can win the Tournament of Freaks.

A collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories from award-winning author Nina Allen, which includes 14 stories from over the past decade. In the collection is the Hugo finalist short story “The Art of Space Travel” and the British Science Fiction shortlisted story “Flying in the Face of God.”

You cannot talk about foodie SFF without talking about Matt’s Sin Du Jour series, a set of seven novellas about a catering company that specializes in only the most fantastic of customers. This has some of the most loving descriptions of food and its preparation I have ever read in my life, and that’s not even touching the plot. (Full disclosure: Matt and I have the same agent.)

This is an adorable little romance where a trans man who is trying to come into his own as a brujo falls in love with the ghost he’s accidentally summoned and sets about solving the murder that created said ghost. It also takes place around Día de los Meurtos and there’s a lot of delicious food involved, including pan de muerto.

I yelled about how good this book is back in July, and that certainly hasn’t changed. But the reason this book is on the list is that the main character, Graciela, is La Bruja de los Pasteles, the “pastry witch” who can tell what kind of pastry everyone who walks into her shop needs. And there’s some amazing baking scenes in this book. It comes with an endless desire for pan dulce.

Another book about the magic of baking, with a minor mage whose magic only works on bread. Her familiar is a sourdough starter! (So is mine, as a matter of fact.) She’s happy to limit her magic to cookies and cakes until an assassin starts stalking the magic folk of her city, and she has to figure out how to survive being the next target.

This is a really cute book about a kid who does close up magic for fun and is really good at it because he can rip holes into parallel universes and steal their stuff. But what lands this book on the list is Sal and Gabi are both from families with a Cuban parent, and there is a ton of delicious Cuban food to be found in these pages.

Rupert Wong is a guy who is a chef by day, so he does plenty of cooking… it just involves human flesh that he’s serving up to ghouls in Kuala Lumpur. And then he moonlights as an administrator for the Ten Hells, as you do. Then, as a chef/administrator has to take care of occasionally, there are also murders to be solved.

The city of Ora is a place surveilled by Anima, an extrasensory human who monitors everything that happens in its streets and buildings via a living network. This network is Anima’s entire world, but æ take comfort in keeping ær city safe. One day, a stranger comes to Ora, one who brings knowledge of many other cities throughout the world, and Anima begins to wonder at ær purpose… and if æ can keep the city truly safe.

At the age of eleven, Mel and Sarah became best friends. Ten years later, Sarah’s sudden death leaves Mel unmoored. She heads to Morgan’s Gap, a small town in the Appalachian Mountains, to fulfill one last promise. There, in the deep story of Sarah’s family, Mel finds mystery, magic, and healing for herself… but whatever caused Sarah’s death might be coming for her now.

Rora uses her shapeshifting magic to act as a spy for the king, hiding her nature and magic as much as she can. But when a magical plague begins to burn through the kingdom, she discovers her best friend Prince Finley is one of its victims, and if she wants to save his life, she must travel back to the wilderness where she was born in search of stardust.

Frances is a seamstress in turn of the century New York City. Still reeling from the recent death of her brother, her life takes a dramatic turn for the worst when a man attacks her… and ends up dead at her feet with her scissors in his neck. But before she can be condemned, she’s spirited away to Haxahaven Sanitarium under the claim she is deathly ill… and discovers it is, in fact, a school for witches. But Frances has no interest in the small, safe magics of Haxahaven, and the power in her is great enough to attract the attention of those who would perhaps use her… or perhaps help her find justice.

Jade Daniels is a half-Indian outcast in the town of Proofrock who finds solace in the face of an absent mother and an abusive father in horror movies. She narrates her own life and that of the town like they’re the protagonists in those films… until the blood begins to spill in reality and she has to use her genre savvy and knowledge to survive. (Yes, this novel is technically horror, but let me tell you how freaking amazing The Only Good Indians is, too.)

A reimagining of Dracula’s voyage to England, which is from the point of view of the ship’s captain. And it is very, very gay, though his normal dreams of queer desire are intercut with nightmares and unsettling omens because… there’s that whole vampire thing happening on his ship.

A historical fantasy about a lordling exiled to China who has had to come back to an estate he hates after the mysterious death of his father and brother. He hires a magician who happens to loathe his family almost as much as he does to protect him from his enemies… and as you might expect in an SFF romance novel, the I hate you, you hate me relationship gets quickly complicated.

In a gaslamp fantasy world of bicycles and witches, Miles Singer faces a horrible choice — he either has to be bound to his sister as a magic battery of sorts, or condemned to a witches’ asylum — the place where common witches go, rather than the powerful ones of noble blood that secretly serve the throne. But then he meets a gorgeous, mysterious man, and that event turns his life and the world around him upside-down.

A retelling of the Green Man mythos, where a scholar comes to the woods to investigate the legend and discovers that the Green Man not only exists, but is very gay for him.

Hazel and Ben are siblings who live in a strange town where humans and fae exist together. In the woods near their home exists a glass coffin, in which sleeps a fae prince, who after generations unmoving, abruptly awakens. Hazel, who spent her childhood pretending to be a knight, know this is her calling — but it may well be her brother who gets the prince.

A delegation of gods and diplomats has come to the empire Olorum to negotiate trade deals and arcane assistance. But Aqib, a distant royal cousin, has his heart captured by a foreign soldier named Lucrio, and in defiance of all, throws himself into a whirlwind romance that cannot hope to survive the hardships of his world.

Uztar is a land where birds are honored and falconers sought for their power. Twins Brysen and Kylee approach their falconer heritage differently, with Kylee rejecting her ancient gifts and Brysen determined to be the best falconer he can be. When war threatens their home, they must journey into the mountains to catch the Ghost Eagle, with Brysen hoping to save the boy he loves and Kylee hoping to protect her brother.

Katrell has been trying to keep herself and her unemployed mother afloat with her ability to talk to the dead, but it doesn’t pay as much as you’d think. And a new problem soon presents itself–she’s attracting attention from the dead side of the equation, and is being warned under no uncertain terms to stop. While she’s willing to play chicken with ghosts, when she accidentally raises someone from the dead, she realizes she might have a new business model — but it’s coming withe a price tag she doesn’t yet realize.

After losing the competition between magicians, Daron’s less concerned with his fall being town gossip and far more with the disappearance of Kallia, whom he’s fallen in love with — and is now quite probably in the hands of a dangerous rival magician. As he tries to find his way to her, Kallia has found herself in a world of mirrors, memories, and illusions, where she’s about to get offered more power than she can imagine, but at a devastating cost.

General Floré has sacrificed much as a warrior of the Stormguard Commandos, perpetrated horrors in the rotstorm that covers the ruins of the Empire she swore to defeat. But now she’s out and done fighting… until her daughter is kidnapped and taken across a land of monsters and ancient gods. If she’s to save her daughter and all her people, she’ll have to take up the Stormguard mantle again.

Astrid, now with her name remembered and her voice reclaimed, has dedicated herself to taking down the Sisterhood and destroying the aunts of the Gean religion. Hiro and Lito take up their own roles in the rebellion, searching for allies and separately undertaking dangerous missions. And back on Venus, Lito’s sister Luciana must try to survive under the thumb of Hiro’s father until her own opportunity to join the fight presents itself.

Alwyn was raised as an outlaw and was content to live freely in the woods with his fellow thieves… until a betrayal shatters his peace and sends him seeking vengeance as a soldier. Soon he finds himself under the command of Lady Courlain, a noblewoman who has visions of a coming demonic apocalypse — and as darkness gathers to oppose her, it becomes more of a question of how true these visions might be.

A book of Lovecraft-inspired poetic nightmares both cosmic and comic that explore monsters known by that name, and those hiding within racism, sexism, and violence.

2020

This was the easiest pick of the entire list, because this book is definitely my favorite of the the last decade, hands down, no contest. I still cannot get over what a beautiful read this book is, and that’s not even getting into the twists and turns of the parallel worlds and the people in them.

2019

A year that made my choice very difficult because it was one hell of a time for SFF. Ultimately, this book won out because I am a sucker for time loop stories, and this takes what made All You Need Is Kill interesting and then gave it a twist by doing everything out of order, and it’s also such a scream of rage at systemic oppression. Beautiful.

2018

This is my favorite of the Wayfarers series, and I think it’s one that stands on its own to be read. It’s about people finding their place in a changing society, and traditions, and it made me cry — not because I was sad, but because it was just beautiful.

2017

Another tough choice, considering this is also the year of All Systems Red by Martha Wells. But what Neon did with gender in this book and its companion volume (The Red Threads of Fortune) and the absolutely bonkers world they built has imprinted this book indelibly on me. And the rest of the series is great, too.

2016

I did not expect to like this book as much as I did when I read it, and it’s one I just devoured in about two days because I couldn’t put it down. The structure of the story is what makes it work so well, I think: they’re interconnected, self-referential standalone stories that give Lovecraft’s work another twist.

2015

I just want you to know how hard this choice was, coming in from the year that also gave us The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. Ultimately, this book won out because I’ve reread it more times. Is that fair for criteria? This is my personal challenge, so yes.

2014

The only surprise about this selection, considering the number of times y’all have heard me go on about this book (and the number of times I’ve listened to the audio), is that it came out when? How has it been seven years? HOW?

2013

This is some Le Guin level storytelling, an intense look at a post-genocide refugee alien race coming to Earth and trying to make a new home, and told with some incredibly compelling characters in a great love story. Still not over it.

2012

Ancient Egyptian fantasy! A fairly rare sub-genre to begin with, but this is just such a rich book in character and description. It’s one of N.K. Jemisin’s earliest works, and her absolute writing talent still shines through.

2011

While putting the third book of a trilogy on a list is kind of a jerk move, I love every book in this trilogy to pieces, and the other two were published before 2011, so this is what you get. Start out with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and you can thank me later.