Greetings, readers, from the other side of two months of deadline rush!

Over April and May, I was hard at work with edits on my forthcoming book, The Upper Tentacle, shifted straight from those to edits on my next book for my agent, had another cycle of edits hit for TUT, then spent a few periods of hyperfocus on each project till I got the next book agent-approved to go on submission (which it now is, yay!) and, after my editor looked over my last edits of TUT, had its delivery and acceptance confirmed. Also yay!

Now that I’ve regained a bit of breathing room, I can cycle back to ye olde newsletter with some book recs I’ve been meaning to post.

The Killing Spell by Shay Kauwe and The Language of Liars by S. L. Huang

It’s apropos that both books feature a blurb from Rebecca Roanhorse right there on the cover, not simply because they’re excellent, but because they both tackle chewy themes of language and culture, how language impacts power, and who should have the rights to wield that power. (Not-really-a-spoiler: the peoples, or species, in the case of TLOL, of the cultures themselves.) 

The Killing Spell approaches these through the lens of fantasy, set in a world where Hawai‘i has undergone a catastrophic flood, displacing its denizens to Los Angeles. The protagonist, Kea, serves as the head of her clan and gets by crafting and selling her Hawaiian-language spells. It’s not long before she’s drawn into a murder plot, and she’s forced to clear her name while at the same time working to protect her people from land-grabbing (and language-stealing and appropriating) LA elites. 

In The Language of Liars, our protagonist, Ro, wishes to jump into the mind of a Star Eater, the species who can mine the element necessary for space travel. Doing so means Ro will be a Star Eater, unable to jump back into his original body. But his goal is not to take over (so he tells himself): it’s to understand, especially when his own home and civilization is at risk of annihilation. To be a savior to his own people and to the Star Eaters themselves, whose reproduction has been waning. Only he soon discovers that he hasn’t been told the truth, and the truth is devastating. 

I don’t want to spoil either book, so I’ll stop there, but reiterate that picking up one—or both!—will be time well spent. 

Morbid Curiosities by S. Hati

 Morbid Curiosities is, to me, a book that defies clear genre categorization. Always a plus in my opinion! It’s a dark academia SF thriller with a tightly paced plot. The protagonist, Aarya, has just joined a competitive program at the Elizabethan Institute, a prestigious research organization. As the sole scholarship student among privileged peers, Aarya must navigate social strata as an outsider while striving to meet her professors’ exacting standards. Her difficulties only compound when anonymous, mysteriously threatening—or are they warnings?—notes appear, telling her to leave. With themes on the price of knowledge, and—again—who holds power and why, Morbid Curiosities deftly shifts between moments of horror (the creepy bunny on the cover is, shall we say, accurate) and heart. Also highly recommended! 

Last

If you care to be on the lookout for another of my short pieces, I’ll have a flash story, “alleles,” up at Adventitious in June. Only I believe I’ll be traveling when the issue goes live, and I’m still reforming my brain from goop after my deadlines (writing this post took me longer than I’d anticipated or desired!) so my Behind the Story piece on that may be a while. 

Till next time, happy reading!

-Amanda