Must-Have Monday is a feature highlighting which of the coming week’s new releases I’m excited for. It is not meant to be a comprehensive list of all books being published that week; only those I’m interested in out of those I’m aware of! The focus is diverse SFF, but other genres sneak in occasionally too.
EIGHT books this week!
(Books are listed in order of pub date, then Adult SFF, Adult Other, YA SFF, YA Other, MG SFF.)
Genres: Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Trans MC
Published on: 19th March 2024
Goodreads
The Woods All Black is equal parts historical horror, trans romance, and blood-soaked revenge, all set in 1920s Appalachia
Leslie Bruin is assigned to the backwoods township of Spar Creek by the Frontier Nursing Service, under its usual mandate: vaccinate the flock, birth babies, and weather the judgements of churchy locals who look at him and see a failed woman. Forged in the fires of the Western Front and reborn in the cafes of Paris, Leslie believes he can handle whatever is thrown at him—but Spar Creek holds a darkness beyond his nightmares.
Something ugly festers within the local congregation, and its malice has focused on a young person they insist is an unruly tomboy who must be brought to heel. Violence is bubbling when Leslie arrives, ready to spill over, and he'll have to act fast if he intends to be of use. But the hills enfolding Spar Creek have a mind of their own, and the woods are haunted in ways Leslie does not understand.
The Woods All Black is a story of passion, prejudice, and power — an Appalachian period piece that explores reproductive justice and bodily autonomy, the terrors of small-town religiosity, and the necessity of fighting tooth and claw to live as who you truly are.
Oh, I am SO in the mood for some merciless trans horror right about now. And it’s Mandelo! *grabby hands* SIA NEEEEEEEEEEDS!
Genres: Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer MCs
Published on: 19th March 2024
Goodreads
A manifestation of ecstasy, heartache, horror and suffering rendered in feverish lyrical prose. Inside are sixteen new stories by some of the genre's most visionary queer writers. Young lovers find themselves deliriously lost in an expanding garden labyrinth. The porter of a sentient hotel is haunted within a liminal time loop. A soldier and his abusive commanding officer escape a war in the trenches but discover themselves in an even greater nightmare. Parasites chase each other across time-space in hungry desperation to never be apart. A graduate student with violent tendencies falls into step with a seemingly walking corpse. Featuring stories from Cassandra Khaw, Joe Koch, Gretchen Felker-Martin, Robbie Banfitch, August Clarke, Son M., Jonathan Louis Duckworth, M.V. Pine, Ed Kurtz, LC Von Hessen, Matteo L. Cerilli, November Rush, Meredith Rose, Charlene Adhiambo, Violet, and Thomas Kearnes.
Am I a self-identifying horror wimp? Yes, yes I am. Has it been made clear to me on (too!) many occasions that I am Not Okay with tragic endings?? Yes, yes it has. Is it therefore extremely stupid of me to pounce on this??? Oh, indubitably! But gods damn it, I’m doing it anyway, because my craving for ‘feverish lyrical prose’ is endless and all-too-rarely sated – and with both Cassandra Khaw and August Clarke (aka H.A. Clarke, author of The Scapegracers) in the line-up, I feel very confident that this will, indeed, be packed full of the kind of writing I swoon for!
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Queer MCs
Published on: 19th March 2024
Goodreads
L. M. Sagas' debut, Cascade Failure, is a highly commercial, sci-fi adventure blending J. S. Dewes' Divide series with the broad fan appeal of The Expanse and the cozy sf of Becky Chambers. It features a fierce, messy, chaotic space fam, vibrant worlds, and an exploration of the many ways to be―and not to be―human.
There are only three real powers in the universe: the corporate power of the Trust versus the Union's labor's leverage. And between them, the Guild tries to keep everyone's hands above the table. It ain't easy.
Branded a Guild deserter, Jal "accidentally" lands a ride on a Guild ship. Helmed by an AI, with a ship's engineer/medic who doesn't see much of a difference between the two jobs, and a "don't make me shoot you" XO, the Guild crew of the Ambit is a little . . . different.
They're also in over their heads. Responding to a distress call from an abandoned planet, they find a mass grave, and a live programmer who knows how it happened. The Trust has plans. This isn't the first dead planet, and it's not going to be the last.
Unless the crew of the Ambit can stop it.
There’s been a huge outpouring of love for this book from early reviews, and while I’m slightly wary of the hype train, I really want to get aboard this one. Who doesn’t want to read about a band of queer space misfits having to save the day?!
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Queer MC, nonbinary love interest, queernorm world
Published on: 19th March 2024
Goodreads
From the author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, a queer sci-fi novel about an Earth refugee and a xenophobic Mars politician who fake marry to save their reputations—and their planet.
In the wake of environmental catastrophe, January, once a principal in London’s Royal Ballet, has become a refugee on Tharsis, the terraformed colony on Mars. In Tharsis, January’s life is dictated by his status as an Earthstronger—a person whose body is not adjusted to Mars’s lower gravity and so poses a danger to those born on, or naturalized to, Mars. January’s job choices, housing, and even transportation options are dictated by this second-class status, and now a xenophobic politician named Aubrey Gale is running on a platform that would make it all worse: Gale wants all Earthstrongers to be surgically naturalized, a process that can be anything from disabling to deadly.
When Gale chooses January for an on-the-spot press junket interview that goes horribly awry, January’s life is thrown into chaos, but Gale’s political fortunes are damaged, too. Gale proposes a solution to both their problems: a five-year made-for-the-press marriage that would secure January’s financial future without naturalization and ensure Gale’s political future. But when January accepts the offer, he discovers that Gale is not at all like they appear in the press. And worse, soon, January finds himself entangled in political and personal events well beyond his imagining. Gale has an enemy, someone willing to destroy all of Tharsis to make them pay—and January may be the only person standing in the way.
A lot of early readers have identified problematic aspects to this, but I’m crossing my fingers that most if not all of that got fixed by the time Mars House went to print, because a lot of other early readers have absolutely loved this. I guess we’ll see?
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Speculative Fiction
Representation: M/M, sapphic MC
Published on: 19th March 2024
Goodreads
Mexican Gothic meets The Lie Tree by way of Oscar Wilde and Mary Shelley in this delightfully witty horror debut. A captivating tale of two Victorian gentlemen hiding their relationship away in a botanical garden who embark on a Frankenstein-style experiment with unexpected consequences.
It is an unusual thing, to live in a botanical garden. But Simon and Gregor are an unusual pair of gentlemen. Hidden away in their glass sanctuary from the disapproving tattle of Victorian London, they are free to follow their own interests without interference. For Simon, this means long hours in the dark basement workshop, working his taxidermical art. Gregor's business is exotic plants – lucrative, but harmless enough. Until his latest acquisition, a strange fungus which shows signs of intellect beyond any plant he's seen, inspires him to attempt a masterwork: true intelligent life from plant matter.
Driven by the glory he'll earn from the Royal Horticultural Society for such an achievement, Gregor ignores the flaws in his plan: that intelligence cannot be controlled; that plants cannot be reasoned with; and that the only way his plant-beast will flourish is if he uses a recently deceased corpse for the substrate.
The experiment – or Chloe, as she is named – outstrips even Gregor's expectations, entangling their strange household. But as Gregor's experiment flourishes, he wilts under the cost of keeping it hidden from jealous eyes. The mycelium grows apace in this sultry greenhouse. But who is cultivating whom?
Told with wit and warmth, this is an extraordinary tale of family, fungus and more than a dash of bloody revenge from an exciting new voice in queer horror.
Alas, this ended up not working for me – it moved very quickly, too quickly for me, and I had a weirdly hard time suspending my disbelief enough to buy into the premise of the mycelium. Which is confusing, because I read things with much stranger premises all the time! So it’s hard to say if it’s a problem with the book, or with me. But there’s plenty of delightfully bizzare, kinda-morbid vibes, with eccentric queerness, if that sounds like your thing!
Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MCs, asexual MC, F/F
Published on: 19th March 2024
Goodreads
'Lucy Holland's lyrical prose and powerful storytelling will lure you in' Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne
A must-read for fans of Circe, Song of the Huntress recasts the folklore behind the Wild Hunt into a dark, feminist fantasy set amidst the legends and beauty of ancient Britain.
Britain, 60AD. Hoping to save her lover, land and her people from the Romans, Herla makes a desperate pact with the king of the Otherworld. But years pass unheeded in his realm, and she escapes to find everyone she loved long dead. Cursed to wield his blade, she becomes Lord of the Hunt. And for centuries, she rides, reaping wanderers’ souls. Until the night she meets a woman on a bloody battlefield – a Saxon queen with ice-blue eyes.
Queen Æthelburg of Wessex is a proven fighter. But when she leads her forces to disaster in battle, her husband’s court turns against her. Yet King Ine needs Æthel more than the dead kings of Wessex are waking, and his own brother seeks to usurp him. Ine’s only hope is to master the magic that’s lain dormant in his bloodline since ancient days.
When their paths cross, Herla knows it’s no coincidence. Something dark and dangerous is at work in the Wessex court. The Otherworld seeks to rise, to bring the people of Britain under its dominion. As she and Æthel grow closer, Herla must find her humanity – and a way to break the curse – before it’s too late.
‘Lucy Holland is a brilliantly assured storyteller’ – Molly Flatt
This is definitely not for fans of Circe – it’s a lot more historical than it is fantasy, but if you’re a fan of this time period, this might be for you!
Published on: 19th March 2024
Goodreads
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by The Washington Post, Time, Los Angeles Times, ELLE, Cosmopolitan, Kirkus, Literary Hub, Autostraddle, The Millions, Electric Literature, and them.
"A profoundly urgent intervention.” ―Naomi Klein
"A timely must-read for anyone actively invested in re-imagining collective futurity.” ―Claudia Rankine
From a global icon, a bold, essential account of how a fear of gender is fueling reactionary politics around the world.
Judith Butler, the groundbreaking thinker whose iconic book Gender Trouble redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts the attacks on “gender” that have become central to right-wing movements today. Global networks have formed “anti-gender ideology movements” that are dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous, perhaps diabolical, threat to families, local cultures, civilization―and even “man” himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, this movement has sought to nullify reproductive justice, undermine protections against sexual and gender violence, and strip trans and queer people of their rights to pursue a life without fear of violence.
The aim of Who’s Afraid of Gender? is not to offer a new theory of gender but to examine how “gender” has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations, and transexclusionary feminists. In their vital, courageous new book, Butler illuminates the concrete ways that this phantasm of “gender” collects and displaces anxieties and fears of destruction. Operating in tandem with deceptive accounts of “critical race theory” and xenophobic panics about migration, the anti-gender movement demonizes struggles for equality, fuels aggressive nationalism, and leaves millions of people vulnerable to subjugation.
An essential intervention into one of the most fraught issues of our moment, Who’s Afraid of Gender? is a bold call to refuse the alliance with authoritarian movements and to make a broad coalition with all those whose struggle for equality is linked with fighting injustice. Imagining new possibilities for both freedom and solidarity, Butler offers us a hopeful work of social and political analysis that is both timely and timeless―a book whose verve and rigor only they could deliver.
I feel like the very barebones cover is kind of pointed; it’s the exact opposite of all the stupid fuss we’ve had over gender the last few years. It’ll probably be a while before I’m in the right headspace to check this one out, but it’s definitely going on my tbr.
Genres: Fantasy
Representation: Vietnam-coded setting and cast
Published on: 19th March 2024
Goodreads
The tantalizing romance of These Violent Delights meets the mechanical wonders of Cinder in The Last Bloodcarver, the first in a two-book debut -- with a riveting medical magic system and lush Vietnam-inspired fantasy world.
Nhika is a bloodcarver. A cold-hearted, ruthless being who can alter human biology with just a touch. In the industrial city of Theumas, she is seen not as a healer, but a monster that kills for pleasure.
When Nhika is caught using her bloodcarving abilities during a sham medical appointment, she's captured by underground thugs and sold to an aristocratic family to heal the last witness of their father’s murder.
But as Nhika delves deeper into their investigation amidst the glitz of Theumas’ wealthiest district, she begins to notice parallels between this job and her own dark past. And when she meets an alluring yet entitled physician's aide, Ven Kochin, she’s forced to question the true intent behind this murder. In a society that outcasts her, Kochin seems drawn to her...though he takes every chance he gets to push her out of his opulent world.
When Nhika discovers that Kochin is not who he claims to be, and that there is an evil dwelling in Theumas that runs much deeper than the murder of one man, she must decide where her heart, and her allegiance, truly lie. And -- if she's willing to become the dreaded bloodcarver Theumas fears -- to save herself and the ones she's vowed to protect.
Who says covers don’t matter? This one sold me on Bloodcarver long before I got to the blurb! And that is one hell of a blurb! This sounds potentially VERY interesting; I’m eager to dive in and meet Nhika!
Will you be reading any of these? Let me know!
Leave a Reply