Category: Swords and Spaceships

Every Great City has a soul, and that soul manifests as an avatar. But New York City? Has six. And they’ve all awakened at once: ordinary people who have become so connected with their borough that they embody it. And what has awakened them awakens an enemy for them to face as well, a Woman in White looking to strangle the city in its cradle before it can be truly born…

Kiem is a prince and the least favorite grandchild of the Emperor, but he’s been given a chance to make himself useful, finally — by marrying a representative of the empire’s newest and most obstreperous vassal planet. That the representative, Count Jainan, is a widower and quite possibly a murderer is of no concern to anyone but Kiem. Neither of these men wants to wed, but if they wish to survive the conspiracy they find entangling them, they’re going to have to work together.

An oral history of a future (reminiscent in some ways of KSR’s The Ministry for the Future), this imagines a mid-21st century world where the world’s governments have collapsed under the weight of war and climate catastrophe. The heart of a new way, this is the oral history of the “insurrectionists” who created the New York Commune in the wake of capitalist armageddon.

In a Philadelphia beleaguered by climate change and economic collapse, the Saturnalia carnival is a winter respite, a holiday wholeheartedly adopted into American life despite its pagan roots. This Saturnalia will be the third anniversary of Nina walking away from the elite Saturn Club. Since then, she’s made a thin living with her Saturn Club tarot deck. But her remaining friend from the club pulls her back in this year for the celebration, and she finds herself once more in the midst of this occult secret society, where she must confront her past if she is to save her own — and the city’s — future.

Riverson is the 32nd ruler of the Stag Empire; he has awakened without the memories of his previous lives, but must still find a way to govern a land grinding toward war and torn with political schisms he barely understands — all while maintaining the erotic rituals necessary to stave off an eldritch horror eager to consume his people.

Attila Veres is one of Hungary’s leading horror writers, and now he’s made his English language debut with this collection of 10 translated stories. Don’t let the fact that he’s primarily known as a horror writer stop you — the stories in here range from weird fiction to cosmic horror, emphasizing the blackly humorous and frightening.

Panics is the only collection Barbara Molinard produced in her lifetime, now translated into English. Molinard was concerned first with the bizarre and the nightmarish, and these 13 stories showcase her views on sickness, death, violence, and control, always with a cast of unreality.

A coup against the royal family took everything from Esha; she’s since taken on the name “Viper” and become a rebel to make the guilty pay. But her greatest target yet, General Hotha, will put more of a challenge than she bargained for in her path: his nephew, a soldier who never strays from what he thinks is the right path.

When the conquering Emperor Sikander comes to Shalingar, Princess Amrita offers herself as his bride, sacrificing everything she cares for to try to save her people and her land. Her offer is not enough; soon she’s fleeing from her besieged palace with only Thala, an oracle once enslaved by Sikander, for company. While Amrita wants to try to help her people, Thala has a grander idea: they will find the Library of All Things, which will allow them to reverse their fates and regain everything Sikander has taken from them.

Women aren’t allowed to practice magic in a world where power comes from bargaining with spirits — spirits that could easily take over an unborn child. Beatrice wants nothing more than to be a Magus, but her family needs her to make a good marriage, and her days before her magic and will are locked away with a marital collar are numbered. But when she finds a grimoire that tells her how to make a bargain with a spirit, she decides it’s worth the risk…until a rival sorceress swindles the book from her.

Magic controls everything in New York City, but its power is waning. Sydney, a new magician with a rare depth of power, is the only one who knows what is happening, and she may be the only one who can stop it. But Sydney wants to destroy the system, because she comes from the House of Shadows…which controls magic with the sacrifices of other magicians.

Alaya Dawn Johnson writes some great long fiction (see: Trouble the Saints), but she’s also an award-winning short fiction writer! This collection of speculative stories focuses on the downtrodden, from those caught up by vampires in Hawai’i to low-ranked Union soldiers in the Civil War.

This debut collection focuses on the lives of Black lesbians through a speculative lens, including a woman who falls in love with the moon — and is surprised by the moon’s response. Krystal A. Smith is also a writer of poetry, and it shows in her beautiful use of language and imagery.

Z Chilworth has undergone a lot of changes in their recent life, from being genderqueer to waking up as a zombie after the car crash that killed the rest of their immediate family. After being rejected by their blood relatives, they move in with their mother’s friend, Mrs. Dunnigan, and makes a new friend — Aysel, a would-be goth who is also an unregistered werewolf. But when a local psychiatrist is murdered, apparently by werewolves, Z and Aysel must try to survive together in a town that has become even more hostile toward “monsters.”

In a near future where the surveillance state reins supreme and no one has face-to-face meetings anymore (it’s all over the network — sound familiar?), a serial killer begins slaughtering junior high school students. The crackdown is swift and harsh. The latest victims have all been in contact with three young women, who take it upon themselves to find the killer — who just might be a werewolf.

I normally don’t do graphic novels, but this one is so sweet, I cannot resist. When Artie sneaks out of her house one night, she finds out that her mother is a werewolf — and thus she begins to learn everything about her family, and finds herself in a new community in which she thrives… and develops a crush on her new friend, Maya. But soon she discovers that werewolves aren’t the scariest things out there — vampires are.

A colony ship named Ragtime docks in the Lagos system after ferrying a thousand people in cold sleep to the colony world Bloodroot. But some of these sleepers will never wake again, and first mate Michelle Campion is the first to discover this terrifying fact. Her distress call brings in Rasheed Fin to investigate these deaths, and he soon concludes that it was no accident.

Imagine Holmes and Watson, except Watson is a sentient mindship called with post-combat PTSD called The Shadow’s Child who makes her living mixing “interesting” (read: mind-altering) tea blends, and Holmes is an abrasive and eccentric human scholar named Long Chau in search of a corpse for scientific study. When it turns out the corpse is the victim of murder, the two investigate this mystery together.

This book still haunts me with its gorgeous prose and intensity. Immanuelle lives in an isolated religious cult where her very existence is blasphemous because she’s the daughter of an outsider — and her mother took some very dark actions because of it. The Darkwood that surrounds her home of Bethel still harbors the spirits of four powerful witches the Prophet killed, and they give Immanuelle the journal of her now-dead mother, who consorted with those witches. At first Immanuelle is shocked, but soon she begins to understand the rage of the witches — and who deserves to receive it.

A group of thrill-seeking friends is brought together to celebrate the impending wedding of two of their number in a crumbling Heian-era mansion that’s haunted by the ghost of a lonely bride who was never joined with her own husband. And as the ghost begins to weave her spell, the group is all too ready to fracture, under pressure from its own secrets.

Evie has been an outcast in her small fishing town of Havnested ever since the death of her best friend, Anna. But one day, a girl who looks eerily like Anna comes out of the sea, and she and Evie together catch the eyes of two princes. This new Anna has her own secrets, however, and one of them is she can’t stay on land without Evie’s help — and magic. Desperate for a happy ending, Evie uses her power to save Anna’s land legs, only to discover what she’s bargained away is her own prince’s heart.

Mina’s homeland has been battered by storms for generations, and the people believe it’s because of the anger of the Sea God — anger that must be appeased with the sacrifice of a beautiful maiden every year. When her older brother’s love is chosen, Mina sacrifices herself instead. But the sea doesn’t end her life — instead she’s swept away to the Spirit Realm, where she finds out that the Sea God is not angry, but in an enchanted sleep. She must find a way to wake him, though here are many who will do anything to stop her.