Welcome to New Release Tuesday, where I round up the sci-fi (and occasional graphic novel) releases dropping this week that I think you should know about. I'm Zee, I run Tattooed Bibliophiles, and my whole thing is diversity in sci-fi — meaning if it's queer, BIPOC-authored, indie, or just something the Big 5 didn't bother to tell you about, it belongs here. New around here? Poke around. I have Harrow worthy good soup. Returning? You know the drill — let's see what dropped.

Devil of the Deep by Falencia Jean-Francois (Left Unread Books of BINDERY!!!, Michael LaBorn) — This is a queer swashbuckling Caribbean fantasy by a Haitian immigrant author. This is a piratey Little Mermaid retelling where Ariel is treated as the child she actually is, and the romance is between the adults. And some of the adults are sexy bossy pirates. I read this before it was picked up by Michael's publishing house, and I loved it then. But with an absolutely STUNNING cover and the press it deserves? This is the exact kind of book that would never find you through an algorithm, would not get a Big 5 marketing push, but will probably be the one you tell everyone about in five years. This is why I'm here. This is the whole point. Is it sci-fi? Well, not really, but it's the kind of high fantasy with rich world building that sci-fi readers love, so I'm putting it here, because this is my page and I WANT TO.

The Subtle Art of Folding Space by John Chu (Macmillan/Tor) — You may have heard me mention this one approximately forty seven times over the last month because I have the ARC and I cannot shut up about it. John Chu has been winning Hugos and Nebulas for short fiction for years and this is his debut novel, which means the short fiction world has been hoarding him and I am choosing to be normal about it. (I am not being normal about it.) This is actually the way of most sci-fi, and there are entire publications dedicated to publishing short sci-fi in an effort to expose the world to more of these amazing authors (check out Clarkesworld if you're interested.) So there's this mechanic who fixes the literal nuts and bolts holding the universe together, and she has a comatose mother, a sister who is literally, actively, and viciously trying to kill her, a secretive group attempting to hijack the fabric of reality, and a himbo sidekick whose cooking is described in ways that made me pause the audiobook to stare into the middle distance and think about food. Generational trauma wrapped in quantum physics with a side of dim sum. This one is worth picking up.

What We Are Seeking by Cameron Reed (Macmillan/Tor) — (Can we take a moment to admire how fucking BIG this image is? Listen, I am having formatting issues today, and those are the LEAST of my issues so I'm gonna roll with it.) A doctor from a world that abolished marriage gets stranded on an alien planet where marriage is not only practiced but aggressively enforced by powerful religious authorities (sound familiar?), accompanied by a distressingly handsome translator (the word "distressingly" is doing a lot of work in that description and I respect it.) Queer MCs, absurd alien biology, completely backwards gender politics, and a plot that is essentially "what if - and hear me out - first contact - but make it a deeply personal reckoning with everything you thought you knew about how people are supposed to love each other." Described as perfect for readers of Ann Leckie and Amal El-Mohtar. I am a reader of Ann Leckie and Amal El-Mohtar. It's me. Hi. (And I'm always a problem.)

Year of the Mer by L.D. Lewis (Simon & Schuster) — (Mer as in merMAID, not murDER. Judas NOOOO!) Also that is one sexy special editon. I love this place, I can say "sexy" and "murder" and "kill" without the algorithm shadow banning me...

L.D. Lewis co-founded FIYAH Literary Magazine (another of those short story publications I was talking about.) She helped build the Ignyte Awards, which are one of the most diverse and interesting genre awards in sci-fi. She has been doing the work for years while the industry did whatever the industry does (you know what it does - I mean, you're here, on Bindery, doing the work yourself just by reading this. You go bestie!) This is her debut novel and it is a bloody Little Mermaid reimagining — not the Disney version, not the one where everything is fine, but the OG one where Arielle's granddaughter Yemaya has to crawl to Ursula for help after a coup kills her entire family, accompanied by her bodyguard/fiancée. Sapphic. Dark. Debut. I'm going to go preorder this immediately and I won't be taking questions. (I also want to take a moment to point out that she is using L.D. as a pseudonym because this genre is still WHACKED. Since it's predominantly read by men, it's predominantly written by men. White men. Cishet white men. I swear to Octavia Butler if you don't go pick up some sci-fi written by some girls gays and theys I'm going to come through this screen and throw hands. (And if you are a girl/gay/they you should really be reading more sci-fi.))

Piper at the Gates of Dusk by Patrick Ness (PRH) — A return to the world of Chaos Walking, which if you read with your kids is either very exciting or a war crime depending on how attached they got to that series. If you haven't heard of it, it seems to have some very The Hatchet-like vibes. I've seen a ton of boys who thought they weren't into reading get very into The Hatchet, so if you have one of those (or three like me, Jod help you) it may be worth looking into. And if your household already has a Chaos Walking person in it (not the neurodivergent kind of Chaos Walking™ but the book series called Chaos Walking) well then, obviously. BTdubs, if you do have one of those Hatchet people in your house, also check out Sovereign by Jeff Hirsch, which is basically The Hatchet in Space™ (yes I'm trademarking in Space, if I had to completely rebrand I would probably "Zee in Space" and that has absolutely zero ring to it. And if you're wondering, yes I'm mutuals with the other girl on Tiktok who grabbed @tattooedbibliophile before I could, which is why I have a zero at the end on that app and none of the others. Literally, all the others. I have this screen name on every social media app there is, except Twitter, which I deleted ages ago and it was too long for them anyway.)

The Heart of the Nhaga by Lee Youngdo, translated by Anton Hur (Simon & Schuster) — First English translation of a popular Korean fantasy series, translated by Anton Hur who is himself a sci-fi author (and if you've read Babel you KNOW why that's important. And if you haven't read Babel...why bestie?) A vengeful anti-hero with a giant sword, flying manta rays with ruined cities on their backs, and corrupt society of immortal psychic reptiles....oh my. Then again, who knows. Translations can go really, really wrong. That cover though? Oh so right.

What did I miss? What's coming out this week?

See you next week. You know, if we're still surviving late stage capitalism/oligarchy.

— Zee

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