by Hana Lee
“The pteropter came shrieking out of the hot blue sky like mana lightning, hell-bent on ruining Jin’s day. Time didn’t do her the courtesy of slowing down. One second she was roaring down the wasteland highway on her magebike, and the next, a demented flying beast had its claws in her shoulder.”
Those are the opening lines of ROAD TO RUIN, my debut novel set to publish from Saga Press on May 14, 2024. Right away, the book establishes itself as a genre-hopper; it straddles the line between science fiction and fantasy, in a zone called “science fantasy.” Which just so happens to be one of my favorite genre niches.
ROAD TO RUIN is set in a harsh world where small pockets of human civilization survive in a wasteland ravaged by deadly storms. Jin, the protagonist, rides a motorcycle-like machine called a magebike, which is powered not by gasoline but by a combination of mana (mystical energy that flows through the earth) and Jin’s innate magical Talent. This marriage of magic and technology is the key invention that allows sparkriders like Jin to cross the perilous wastes. Jin makes her living as a courier, ferrying love letters between a pair of star-crossed royals named Kadrin and Yi-Nereen. Unfortunately for Jin, she’s fallen in love with both of her employers.
If you’re intrigued by genre-bending SFF with a focus on tangled character relationships (romantic or otherwise) and/or an environment that wants to kill you, I’ve put together a reading list of fantastic titles that would fit next to ROAD TO RUIN on a bookshelf.
GIDEON THE NINTH by Tamsyn Muir: Pitched as “lesbian necromancers in space,” this series opener blends together fantasy, science fiction, and horror conventions into a delightfully dark, rich, twisted tapestry. One of my favorite elements of the book is the way the setting—a crumbling Gothic-style mansion on a mysterious planet connected to the god-emperor figure the characters worship—slowly becomes both more recognizable and more chillingly alien as the characters explore its depths. My other favorite element, of course, is the relationship between the two female leads, Gideon and Harrowhark. There’s an incredible amount of drama and toxic codependency and—dare I say—affection between them that makes for a delicious read.
THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone: This novella is told partly in epistolary fashion and partly through third-person narrative. It’s decidedly speculative, with the main characters being rivals from different time-traveling factions, but the focus is less on technology or magic and more on the romance between the two. Time travel is both a plot device and a vehicle for gorgeous, moving expressions of love. It’s one of my favorite examples of a story that plays with the boundaries of genre and defies comparison to other SFF books; THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR creates its own niche.
ANNIHILATION by Jeff Vandermeer: This is the only book in the reading list to have a Hollywood adaptation, which is satisfyingly faithful in tone to the original but does unique and interesting things with the story. I love both book and movie in their own way. ANNIHILATION blends science fiction, horror, and a genre called “weird fiction”; it’s also a high-profile example of a recently-coined subgenre called “climate fiction,” or “cli-fi.” It’s a beautiful, unsettling, gripping novel that pulled me through my first (and, to date, only) read-through in a daze; I admit to not remembering much of the plot, but being absolutely haunted by the imagery, especially in the climactic lighthouse sequence. It’s one of those books that left its hooks embedded in me at a subconscious level.
NINEFOX GAMBIT by Yoon Ha Lee: Ah, my love: the tasty character dynamic that is two consciousnesses literally inhabiting the same body, forced to work together despite conflicting personalities and priorities. Set against a backdrop of war, strategic maneuvers, and the horrors of a genocidal empire, the relationship between disgraced captain Kel Cheris and disembodied undead tactician Shuos Jedao (whose consciousness is downloaded into Cheris’s brain and gives her constant grief from minute one) is compelling to the extreme. The worldbuilding is, again, my beloved mix of fantasy and sci-fi, with a fascinating magic system built on calendars of all things. All in all, it’s a dense and chewy read with one of my favorite central character dynamics of all time.
LORD OF THE EMPTY ISLES by Jules Arbeaux: My favorite part of this book is the fact that the magic system and the relationships between characters are literally woven together. The main character casts a death curse on his hated enemy and the murderer of his brother, only to discover (to his horror) that the curse has rebounded, because he and his enemy are fatebound: a soulmate-like bond that means their destinies are intertwined, even though they don’t know it yet. The central relationship is queerplatonic rather than romantic, a rare but refreshing type of character dynamic that remains difficult to find in SFF literature despite growing recognition. Unlike the other entries on my reading list, this book isn’t actually available to read yet. It releases on June 6, 2024 and I had the pleasure of reading an early copy. You can preorder it now! (It pairs extremely well with a preorder of ROAD TO RUIN.)
I hope this reading list expands your genre horizons and illustrates a tiny portion of the incredible breadth and diversity that SFF has to offer!
If you’ve already read everything on the list and have more genre-blending titles to suggest, give me a shout on Twitter or Instagram at @K_Hana_Lee. I’m always looking for new books to sink my teeth into.
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