It's Tuesday, which means new sci-fi dropped and I have Opinions. I'm mainly using Storygraph and publisher sites to find them, so if you're an indie author and you've got something coming out let me know.

Ruiner by Lara Messersmith-Glavin (AK Press, one of my FAV indie presses) - Nonbinary MC, storytelling as literal combat magic, political fantasy about exploitation and environmental destruction. The world runs on stories and story tellers battle each other by spinning tales out of light, and a story lost in combat is lost forever, sometimes taking part of the teller with it. Which is both a beautiful metaphor for what it costs marginalized people to keep fighting AND an extremely cool magic system. This is an indie press debut and exactly the kind of thing the algorithm will not show you, which is why I'm here. Speaking of algorithms...

Love Is An Algorithm by Laura Brooke Robson (HarperCollins) - Gateway drug into sci-fi again (see last week's post.) I regret nothing. As usual I'm stretching the definition of sci-fi, this is sort of contemporary romance, but it's a satire of AI and tech startup culture and dating apps and it has a musician with writer's block (relatable - not the musician part, I am deeply and unapologetically terrible at music) and an app developer with anxiety whose creation starts telling people how to run their entire lives. I was in college during the creation of Facebook and the current dating scene is essentially another planet to me, but I'm still interested in this book concept.

Ruins by Lily Brooks-Dalton (Hachette) - I find it ironically funny that two books have Ruin in the name this week - if that doesn't tell you about the state of the world!!! If you watched The Midnight Sky on Netflix and then found out it was based on a book and the book was better (it always is), this is that author's new one. A post-climate-catastrophe archaeologist (what a mouthful) with a shitty marriage becomes obsessed (compensating much?) with proving a lost civilization existed that nobody else believes in, and then she undertakes an expedition that will either vindicate her completely or destroy what's left of her life. This is kind of speculative lit fic. Jeff VanderMeer called it "stunning and highly recommended" which means it's probably going to rearrange your internal organs. Though TBH I don't put much stake in author notes nowadays.

Event Horizon by Balsam Karam, translated by Saskia Vogel (The Feminist Press at CUNY) - Kurdish-Swedish author, feminist indie press, translated into English. A seventeen year old girl from the Outskirts (a stateless borderlands where women and children have been stripped of rights and legal status...sound familiar?) throws Molotov cocktails at a government building in protest, gets imprisoned as the instigator, is tortured, and given a final choice: public execution or being launched into a black hole as part of an experiment. She chooses the black hole. I would too. It's $16.95 from a feminist indie press. Buy it and eat a pb&j for lunch instead of takeout. Feed your soul, bestie.

Star Wars: Legacy of Vader — The Reign of Kylo Ren Vol. 2 by Charles Soule (Marvel Comics, which is now a Disney imprint) - Collecting issues 7-12 of the ongoing Marvel series, if you are in to this sort of thing (a super long term commitment where you have no idea where to start and will probably regret your life choices once you're too far in to stop.) On Goodreads I saw a reviewer describe Vol. 1 as "a gas station sandwich at 2am that somehow tastes better when you consider what else is available" which is TBH the most honest Star Wars book review I have ever read and I respect it enormously. If you are a Star Wars comics person, this is for you. I haven't read any of these so please feel free to come for my in my ignorance.