Category: Swords and Spaceships

All the locals know of the stories about the lake, the world beneath it that’s half-water and half-air. Lore Garcia and Bastián Silvano have actually been to that alien, magical world, however. Bastián half grew up there; Lore’s only seen it once, but it changed their life forever. But when the under world of the lake begins to come to the surface, Lore and Bastián must work together to stop if if they don’t want their secrets exposed. And to start, that means after seven years of not speaking, they have to find some way to reconcile.

Aliens have been trying to destroy Huaxia for years; to defend itself, the country builds Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that must be piloted by a male-female team–and during battle, the women often die from the mental strain. Yet Zetian offers herself up as a pilot-concubine as soon as she turns eighteen, seeking vengeance against the pilot that murdered her older sister. When she goes into battle with him, it is she who emerges alive–and as an Iron Widow. Punished for her refusal to give in and die, she’s paired with the notorious Li Shimin–but she’s not done fighting yet, and turns her gaze toward Huaxia itself.

This collection of short fiction from Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (who has authored a lot of short fiction and has several other collections to check out) focuses on SFF that is positive and upbeat. And of course, there are still robots.

The “Good Luck Girls” were sold to a “welcome house” as children, the bodies branded with cursed markings to trap them in this life they do not want. Aster, Violet, Tansy, Mallow, and Clementine have become closer than sisters, looking out for each other. And when Clementine accidentally murders a man, they all resolve to escape together–and have revenge on the country that has used them all.

To escape damnation, violin prodigy Shizuka Satomi must convince seven other violin prodigies to sell their souls to the Devil in exchange for success. She’s only one shy of her goal and has her eye on the woman who will fulfill it: a young, trans runaway named Katrina Nguyen, who has the wild talent that could make anyone weep. But when Shizuka meets a retired starship captain during a coffee date, she finds herself re-evaluating everything.

You should not be surprised to see this book on this list, considering I wrote an entire newsletter not long after I came out about how much I love it. Razia Khan was once raised to be a crown prince, but she was born with the soul of a woman and ran away so she could become her true self. Among the other hijras of Bikampur, she has a new family of sisters, and she’s become the finest dancer of her dera. And then one day, she catches the eye of the prince of Bikampur… and falls in love with him in return.

This anthology won a bunch of awards back in 2018, and this is the place to go if you want some short fiction. You get 25 stories by trans authors that expand the full range of our favorite genres.

A journalist is sent to the front where the Imperial Army is continuing its aggressive colonial expansion, seeking to consume coal and iron. He soon finds his cynical patriotism called into question as he travels the villages of an invaded land and goes to the refugee city of Hronople, a Utopia besieged by the empire he’s part of.

Foster child Bitter has been chosen to attend a special arts school called Eucalyptus in the city of Lucille. She wants to just focus on her painting, but the deep injustices that rend her city soon draw her friends toward revolution… and face her with the choice between pure creative pursuit and the desire for justice that may come at a high cost.

Craig Laurance Gidney’s latest collection of short fiction covers the spectrum from retold folktales to contemporary settings to secondary, haunted worlds. The stories here are dark, filled with horror–and beauty.

Dark Factory is a dance club like no other: three floors with their own DJs, bars, and completely customizable realities. But when a rooftop rave on the club lets loose a burst of fathomless energy, it may drive the floor manager, a rogue journalist, and a DIY artist who each have their own vision of true reality into the ultimate experience.

It’s 1912 in a Cairo very different from the one we know, where Djinn have come into the world and the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities regulates magic. When an entire secret brotherhood is slain, Agent Fatma is put on the case and discovers the murderer claims to be the man to whom that brotherhood was dedicated–al-Jahiz himself, the one who opened our world to magic. Whether he is real or imposter, he must be stopped, and she’s the woman to do it.

Jewel is an established courtesan in a luxurious and well-renowned House in a far-future city where the government will cull anyone for a single mistake. Jewel is keeping her head down and living her life… until one of her friends dies at the hands of a client and then, even more shockingly, comes back to life.

A Lipan girl from our world named Nina and a cottonmouth kid named Oli from the land of spirits and monsters never would have met up, had something not gone terribly wrong in both their homes. A catastrophe on earth and a strange sickness in Oli’s realm drives them together in their search to find answers… and there are forces that will kill to keep them apart.

The land of Mafinga is ruled by a dictator who hates books and, with the help of his pet sorcerer, has made the environment almost uninhabitable to the point that the sun has killed all of the able men. Jasmin has been widowed by this catastrophe, but she has her lost husband’s magical story machine, which tells her of a better world. When her children are claimed by the dictator’s childless queen, Jasmin can do little to save them… until she discovers the secrets behind the rulers and their sorcerer.

A volcano mysteriously begins growing–not erupting, but growing–in the Central Park Reservoir; after three weeks, it is almost two and a half miles tall. As this geological impossibility is happening, a cast of characters across the world begin to undergo their own personal environmental cataclysms and eruptions.

I imagine you have heard of Rosewater, but just in case you haven’t, this is one heck of a start to one heck of a trilogy. Set in Nigeria in the fictional town of Rosewater, which has grown around the edges of an unknowable alien biodome, this book is a journey into the bizarre, where human and alien cross in unexpected ways and the dark history of a government agent points to a horrifying and beyond human future for the world.

This book starts as a mystery, when a ship carrying a thousand people in deep sleep arrives at the Lagos system, only for the first of the crew to be revived to discover that some of the passengers will never wake. But there’s something far more sinister afoot than a mechanical failure, something that weaves together the politics of multiple far-flung systems, and the first mate and the investigator she called in are stuck in the middle of it.

Cassandra Frost is a witch who would like to not be involved in any of this magical nonsense; she keeps the few spells she casts under wraps and tries to protect the secrecy of the Wellington witch community while staying well away from them. But when she casts a spell to save a geeky graphic designer named Adrian, her ordinary life and her witching life are suddenly on a collision course.

When Addie inherits a bed and breakfast in a tiny town, she was already nonplussed–but then she discovers that it’s magical, and she has an entire witch heritage that she’s been trying to ignore this entire time. Worse, there’s a decades old mystery just waiting for her arrival…

The Grief is an unstoppable melancholia that has infected the world thanks to the extinctions and ecological collapse; it has only one ending, which is suicide. When Ruby’s friend succumbs to the Grief, what she leaves behind are letters talking of the resurrected dead, such as the Tasmanian tiger. But this scientific rebirth is not necessarily biological… and it comes with a price.

Dedicated boyfriends Basil, a library witch, and Sebastian, a paranormal Youtuber, have settled down in a sleepy suburb and all seems well. But then mysterious books start showing up in Sebastian’s library and there’s something making noises in the attic, it’s up to them to investigate…