Category: Swords and Spaceships

In a post-apocalyptic world, the Diné have walled themselves off in their former reservation and become reborn as a nation. Their gods walk the land again–but so do monsters. Maggie Hoskie is a professional monster hunter with a difficult past and a lot of complicated relationships… and she’s caught the attention of the gods to boot. To find a missing girl, she has to enlist the help of an unconventional medicine man… and they both end up getting more than they bargained for.

A monster that cannot die stalks the ruined, festering, abandoned city of Elendhaven, sent on tasks by his frail master. The monster’s ultimate goal is revenge on all those who have wronged his city, no matter what he will destroy along his path.

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?

Nita’s mother is a monster hunter who makes most of her money by selling the parts of the things she captures on the internet–parts that are dissected out by Nita herself from still-living monsters. Nita, however, draws the line at cutting up a scared teenaged boy, no matter what her mom says he is. No good deed goes unpunished, however; when she saves him, she gets sold in his place, since she’s a bit of a monster, too.

Zephyr is a Harpy, which means she’s a half-god and should be a an extremely competent assassin… but instead she’d rather watch tv. She sucks at magic anyway. But then her sister is murdered, and Zephyr is forced to use a forbidden power to keep herself alive, which means she’s now on the run from her own people as well as the would-be assassin. What she’s running toward might be even worse–a destiny she’d rather not fulfill.

Four friend from the rez made a big mistake one night, committing a fundamental sin as hunters that gets them in trouble with local police and elders. It’s ire they can escape by simply leaving. But they’ve angered something far worse as well, something that has no trouble following them no matter how far they run from the reservation.

Andrew and Eddie are best friends, closer than brothers, and the longest they’ve been apart is when Eddie heads off to start his graduate studies at Vanderbilt, on the understanding that Andrew will be moving out to join him in six month. But just days before Andrew’s arrival, Eddie is dead, apparently of suicide, and he leaves behind questions and secrets and a hungry ghost that Andrew must now deal with.

A group of ordinary people go about their lives as one day, a huge star suddenly begins burning in the sky. No one knows what could have caused it; after the initial excitement, people return to their ordinary routines. Strange things begin happening across the world, at the fringes of human existence… but it won’t stay on the fringes for long.

El has made it to her senior year in the deadly school known as Scholomance, where the very institution tries to do its best to kill its students. She’s made a few allies along the way, but it’s not enough — the school seems desperate to kill her unless she accepts her destiny of dark sorcery. But she is determined to survive, to find her own fate, and to get herself and her friends out alive.

Mara has fallen to the Karensa Federation, and Striker Talin is forced to betray her fellows and the remains of her nation if she wants to save her mother from the hands of the Premier. She must become one of the Federation’s Skyhunters, though hope is not wholly lost. Red remains as well, and though his link with Talin is weak, together they might be able to salvage their home.

Koffi is sixteen years old and has been indentured at the Night Zoo to pay off her family’s debts. But she has a secret of her own–magic that should not exist flows in her blood, and if that is found out, she will be killed. But when she has to used her power against the cruel master of the Night Zoo, she flees for her life and accidentally saves the young warrior Ekon from a fabled monster called the Shetani. Together, they form a tentative alliance and hunt down the beast, Ekon for redemption, and Koffi for freedom.

Tamar and Fayard have lived thousands of lives across the history of the world, with one thing in common — their love for each other and the lengths they’ll go to be together. The one thing they’ve never experienced is how their story ends — and to see that, they must break the cycle. But it may require more than they’re willing to sacrifice.

Shizuka made a literal deal with the devil to escape damnation. The price? She has to convince seven of her fellow violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She’s managed to swindle sixth, but in her pursuit of the final soul, she runs into complications she could have never imagined: a retried starship captain who she can’t help but love and a runaway with a wild talent who all too quickly feels like family.

Unit Four is a biological robot created to oversee a Helium-3 mine in Jupiter’s atmosphere. It is activated in the middle of a crisis, with aliens attacking. It should seem a simple matter of ship-to-ship combat and following its handler’s orders, but something is wrong. There are missing files, missing information, and more afoot, and Unit Four will need to become something more than a simple tool in short order.

Persephone has never known her family; she was abandoned as an infant and spent her childhood being shuttled around the foster care system. And she’s was a weird child at that, with inexplicable things always happening around her. As an adult, she has remained rootless, moving from town to town and working only temporary jobs. After accidentally showing off her magic, she quickly moves on… only to be invited to Wile Isle by the one friend she’s managed to make. There, she begins to find answers about herself and her family… and the curse that haunts them.

Best Novel–Adult

Winter Solstice is usually a time of celebration in the holy city of Tova, but this year, it coincides with a solar eclipse that the Sun Priest claims will unbalance the world. A ship will arrive on that fateful day, captained by a woman who can calm the waters with a song, and its only passenger is a supposedly harmless young man.

Best Novel–YA

Bree tries to escape her grief at the death of her mother by joining a residential program for bright high school students at UNC. On her first night there, she witnesses a demon, the “Legendborn” students of UNC that fight it, and survives the experience with her memory intact, despite the best magical efforts of those students. It’s an experience that unlocks her own powers—and makes her realize that there is more to the “accident” that caused her mother’s death than she first realized.

Best Middle Grade

Right before Halloween, two best friends (Syd and Lucely) accidentally cast a spell that awakens malicious spirits that go rampaging through their town of St. Augustine. They must seek the help of Syd’s grandmother, who is a witch, and her tabby Chunk to save their home.

Best Novella

A Black girl with psychic abilities so powerful that she could level a city watches as her younger brother is incarcerated–and must decide what she will and won’t do about it as she watches him suffer through their connection.

Best Anthology/Collected Works

An absolutely gorgeous SFF anthology filled with resistance, hope, and stories of Black women and gender non-conforming people.

Best Comics Team

A beautifully illustrated graphic adaptation of Octavia Butler’s famous and terrifyingly prescient novel.

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.)