Backlist Book Love (September 2025)
Book recommendations if you'd like to take a trip in space.
It has been far too long since I did one of these!
But I am currently feeling extremely grateful for all the people who have enjoyed From Unseen Fire and told people about it, contributing to its having quite a long tail and, a few weeks ago, cracking the top 100 in several Amazon categories despite having been out for over seven years, so it seems a good time to spread some book!joy of my own.
And apparently the theme this month is “space!”
Unconquered Sun, Kate Elliott
Published June 2021
Genderflipped Alexander the Great, in space! This book is absolutely enthralling and captivating, with cutthroat politics, really neat space-worldbuilding, high emotions, and some very cool work done with POVs.
A Pale Light in the Black, K. B. Wagers
Published March 2021
This first entry in the NeoG series — that’s Near-Earth Orbital Guard — is a wild adventure of a found family that gets caught up in a dangerous conspiracy while trying to win, essentially, the Space Olympics. It’s military sci-fi, but, y’know… fun.
The Spare Man, Mary Robinette Kowal
Published October 2022
A murder mystery! In space! I want more of these to exist, tbh, but this one is a particular delight if you ever enjoyed the Nick & Nora movies. A honeymooning couple on an interplanetary space liner gets tangled up in an onboard murder case. And there’s a DOG! A Westie! (Look, I used to have a Westie, they’re precious and wonderful and worth exclaiming over)
As always, the links in this post are Bookshop affiliate links, from which I will earn a small commission should you use them to purchase these (or other books on that site in the same browsing session)! I pretty much always use that commission to just… buy more books, so it’s a self-feeding monster. 😅
Now go forth and read!
