New Sci-Fi and Fantasy for Book Clubs This Summer

Chee’s A Thousand Steps into Night had me thinking how maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to live freely as a blue-skinned she-demon in a Japan-inspired world. Here, she’s meted out another action-packed YA fantasy that features powerful, magic-wielding femmes and nonbinary teens. Instead of demons, there are the kindling—magical youth who were once used as weapons by the elite in their wars. Now that kindling warfare has been made illegal, the kindlings themselves have been made obsolete and, therefore, aimless. But there is still violence, and when a village is about to be set upon, a group of seven kindlings takes a stand (this has been likened to the films Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven, if you weren’t already picking up on those vibes.)

This busy book, with its promises of time-traveling romance, slice-of-life comedy, and spy thriller, is one of thee books to read this summer, regardless of genre. In it, a little ways into the future, a civil servant is offered beaucoup bucks, but the new project that comes with this increase in salary is a little…weird. It involves her working as a “bridge” to a time “expat” — someone from another time. Her expat is Commander Graham Gore, a man from 1847 who was supposed to have died during an Arctic expedition. As he lives with the civil servant turned bridge and adjusts to things like washing machines, music apps, and women’s constantly exposed calves, he falls in love. A zany cast of secondary characters — which include everything from a 17th-century film (and Tinder) lover to a former spy and a WWI captain — round out this everywhere kind of story.

The official blurb for this has the phrase “edgy, queer cyberpunk detective mystery,” which is so very extremely up my alley. It follows Kiera, who is busting her you-know-what trying to stay afloat. In order to keep a roof over her polycule’s head, she takes a job tracking cheaters with Angel Herrera—a private investigator who’s resistant to a technological world—but then a funny thing happens. They’re hired to find Herrera’s ex-best friend, and Kiera’s attorney, and they’ve only got a stick of incense as a clue. Then, Kiera’s latest love interest goes missing (as does their hand), and the familiar smell of incense is present again. Now, there are two cases that are linked by the scent of sandalwood, and that Kiera has been framed for. Herrera was getting on her nerves before, but now she’ll need him to help her clear her name, in this futuristic buddy cop/cyberpunk noir thriller.

Nebula Award-winning Mohamed’s latest novella is a fantastical horror tale of missing children and wrathful tyrants. The wild forest Elmever is so formidable, even the tyrannical ruler of the land just outside of it fears it. That’s why, when his children go missing in the forest, he commands Veris Thorn to retrieve them. She’s the only person to have ever rescued a child from the forest, and if she doesn’t repeat her former success, the tyrant will kill her if the forest doesn’t first.