#ya sci fi

[gabibookworm]

Happy book birthday to this week’s new releases! 📚

[fullibooked]

"The left eye, to be exact. The distinction is important. One is artificial, one is not. One holds red and soaks the world through with it, and the other belongs to me." - Sona, chapter 1.

Gearbreakers! God-damn gearbreakers!! I love my stupid children. I love my stupid little gay children. I love my absolutely reckless, chaotic, trouble-magnet, dumbass crew of kids. And their new revenge-bent, messed-up, bff. Thank the giant metallic gods for my gearbreakers. (Heh, irony).

Mechas made in godlike reverence. That get called Windups Kids of war fighting for what they believe in. Revenge slowly ruining you in ways you'd never expected. Body mods and tattoos. A playlist of bangers to chase down giant robots to. Crazy siblings, murder, escapes, suspicious behaviour and bad breakups.

YEP Gearbreakers by Zoe Hana Mikuta has everything you need for your tech-crunching rebellion. And a robotic red eye for bonus creepy points.

I really loved this one. From its plot, to its vibes, to its message, and to its absolute insanity of a last page that I totally thought was Not the last page until I was suddenly looking at the acknowledgements and shouting the word 'No!' in the middle of the night. Which is to say, if Godslayers doesn't come out asap, I'm bout to lose my mind. (And I mean this as a compliment)

[brightbeautifulthings]

The Weight of the Stars by K. Ancrum

"'You want to see space? I've been staring at it in your eyes for months. You want to leave? I've spent all year learning what it means to endure. I know the weight of this and I know the price.'"

Year Read: 2025

Rating: 4/5

Thoughts: This isn't my favorite Ancrum, but there's still a lot to like about it. Her writing is a joy as always, the characters are lovable and heart-breakingly fractured, and the premise is absolutely fascinating. I really enjoyed Ryann as a main character, and the friendships and family relationships are the heart of the book. The wlw romance is wonderfully complicated with a dose of inevitable tragic doom. There's also a lovely cameo of characters from The Wicker King living their best lives, so that was sweet.

I think the one area where the novel doesn't really succeed is in explaining why someone would go on what's essentially a suicide mission to space, particularly someone young who has their entire life ahead of them and family/friends who love them. It comes over feeling like one of those things you either get or you don't (and obviously I don't), but one of the purposes of fiction is to put us in someone else's perspective. Despite reading an entire book on the concept, I still didn't understand the appeal.

Had it not been for the ending, I think I would have enjoyed it more. I could see the direction it was going and thought surely Ancrum would swerve at some point, but no. It goes exactly where I thought, and I didn't care for it. I suspect, like most of her novels, the people who are hit by it will be hit hard; unfortunately, I wasn't one of those.

[wardenclyffe]

Wardenclyffe - a new YA Sci-Fi Novella

When the city of Valentine loses power, an android named Bit tries to help restore it. Through old recordings documenting the relationship between two young girls, Bit learns of a possible new power source in a distant, unknown town and sets out to find it.

Along the way, she encounters different human communities, learning about the world outside of her home and what it means to survive. 

Through love, loss, friendship, and beauty, an android sent to save her home finds the world is more complicated than she was programmed to believe. 

Buy it through IndieBound

Find it at Barnes & Noble

[bigdreamsandwildthings]

Cozy summer reading sessions 🐶

[bashsbooks]

Iron Widow Book Review

★★★★★ ~ 5 out of 5 stars

Due to its popularity on Tiktok and Tumblr, I have long heard rumors about Xiran Jay Zhao’s Iron Widow. I tend to be skeptical about social media hype, but after a friend recommended it to me personally, I added it to my to-read list, forgot about it for like a year, and then promptly remembered it when I was figuring out what books to read for my 2023 reading challenges. And as soon as I started reading, I was like, “Oh shit. I should’ve read this sooner.” 

Iron Widow lives up to the hype. Actually, it smashes through the hype and goes way past what I expected. Set in a futuristic alternative universe based on Chinese history and mythology, Iron Widow follows Xu Zetian as she volunteers to be a concubine-pilot, a deadly but supposedly necessary role required to power Chrysalises, which are basically giant supersuits used to fight off aliens. Concubine-pilots usually die in the process of powering Chrysalises, though their families are heavily compensated for this sacrifice. At the beginning of Iron Widow, Zetian is desperate to get vengeance for her sister was forced to become a concubine-pilot by their family - and then murdered by a male pilot before she could. (Interestingly enough, piloting the Chrysalises is not deadly for men - usually.) So Zetian volunteers with the ulterior motive of killing her sister’s murderer and quickly finds out that everything she knows - about the piloting system, gender and social dynamics, about the war - is a lie. 

Although the patriarchy is a primary antagonist in Iron Widow, not every man in the book sucks  sucks; in fact, Zetian manages to find not one but two love interests in Gao Yizhi, the son of the richest man in the country, and Li Shimin, a man who murdered his whole family (for good reasons, he’s valid) and is only being kept alive because he’s the best damn pilot in the war. As a hater of love triangles and a lover of fellow bisexual men, I am pleased to report that Yizhi and Shimin are also very interested in each other. 

Iron Widow contains such a nuanced and fascinating take on how the patriarchy fucks over everyone. Zetian is understandably upset with the way women are treated, but she learns over the course of the novel that things aren’t all sunshine and roses for men, either. This does not diminish her passion for fighting for women (and indeed, it is never really poised as a competition of who has it worse; it’s pretty clear that it’s by-and-large worse for women), but it allows her to see men as fellow humans rather than inherently The Enemy. 

Zetian is also disabled, having had her feet broken and bound from a young age to turn them into ‘lotus feet’, which are considered beautiful in her culture. She has trouble walking, even with the aid of a cane, and she constantly feels pain in her feet. This is a central aspect of her character, not an afterthought, and it’s woven into the novel thoughtfully. It parallels and interweaves with the novel’s exploration of gender and gendered expectations - much like Zetian cannot be reduced to the caricature of womanhood expected of her, nor can she be reduced to a caricature of her physical disability. Instead, the integration of these aspects into her character are complex. Her successes are not in spite of her womanhood and her bound feet, but because of them, and that makes her all the richer as a protagonist.

I love Iron Widow, and I’m happy to recommend it with a full 5 out of 5 stars. Its sequel, Heavenly Tyrant, comes out in August, and I can’t wait to read it. Xiran Jay Zhao, Iron Widow’s author, is here on Tumblr (@/xiranjayzhao) and they have already posted some Heavenly Tyrant memes to tide me over until then. (And if you like authors commenting on their books outside of the text, then I recommend following their Tumblr after you’ve finished Iron Widow.)

[qbdatabase]

Daily Book – Iron Widow

The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises; it doesn’t matter that the girls often die from the mental strain …

The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn’t matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.

When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.​

To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia​. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.

[camille09hart]

Hello everyone! Today is the big day where I finally publish my book, Humebeasts. It's a YA Sci-Fi novel with human/animal hybrids and musicians. Check it out and spread the word!

Website for Lisa Camille Munoz. Writer of Humebeasts. Find out all upcoming projects right here.