Justin’s (Ingot.bsky.social) Book Recs

Top 5? This changes a lot.

This is how you lose the time war,

A Wizard’s guide to Defensive Baking,

Gideon the Ninth

Player of Games

Ninefox Gambit

Listed by authors in no particular order.

Becky Chambers: The foremost author in the “hopepunk genre”, optimistic, beautifully fleshed out character driven slice of life books, often with smaller, more deeply personal stakes. Abundant queer content.

• Long way to a small angry planet: Optimistic, a beautiful view of what could be, and an emphasis on my favorite race of alien creatures, a lizardfolk race that shares body heat through cuddling and pretty much by default retires to communes in the countryside to live in giant polyamorous family groups. Really interesting ideas about gender, love, family structure, and obligation. The other books in the series are good, but this was my favorite.
• A Psalm for the Wildbuilt: one of the most cathartic, and philosophical books I’ve read, again, it’s a novel about what could be, and diving into the deep question of what people need to thrive if their basic functions are all taken care of. Post scarcity with a twist. The follow-up, a prayer for the crown shy, is also amazing.

Iain M Banks: The author of the culture series and one of the most talented philosopher/linguistic authors I’ve ever read, heartbreakingly beautiful prose, with impeccable, flawless word choice. Each books picks an idea, then spends a few hundred pages picking it apart until it’s sharp like a knife that sticks with you for a while.

• Player of Games: Technically book 2 of the series, but start here. Book 1 is great, but it’s honestly a poor introduction to the culture and I feel like you’ll get more out of book 1 after reading book 2. This one is deeply focused on colonialism and meddling in developing societies, plays with gender, prominently features a trans character (written in the mid 80s!) and deals from the culture from within. Big, big, big ideas in this one, post scarcity as we mentioned.
• Use of Weapons: Diverging narrative timelines, as each chapter swaps between past and present, moving forwards or further back in time, it’s an absolutely stunning character study and examines the question or even possibility of redemption following horrific acts committed in a time of war.

P. Djèlí Clark: Deep, deep cuts into egyptian alternative history, remarkably feminist despite historical context, takes place in the early 1900s.

• A master of djinn: What if djinni actually existed and cohabitated in society? Focused on egypt as an ascendant power into the turn of the 20th century, as they embraced djinni and developed their tech and culture around it. Also starkly feminist, queer content too.

Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone: (Max gets his own section later).

• This is how you lose the time war: put a gun to my head and this is my favorite book from the last 10 years. It trusts the reader, it’s light, airy, efficient, and yet heartbreaking and enchanting. It’s historical, speculative, and romance all at once. The confusion and pain that Red experiences is one of the first times I’ve felt myself seen in literature, I even asked the author (Max) if he had intended for Red to be seen as grey aro, he didn’t, but was happy I saw that in her.

Max Gladstone: His solo work… this dude writes anime. It’s bombastic, loud, and demands a television adaptation.

• Last Exit: A roadtrip saga that joins our protagonists after they fail to save the world, it’s millennial ennui, as they try to reclaim their dreams and ambitions before the dark they unleashed while trying to make a better world swallows the goodness left in everyone.

NK Jemison: Need I say more?

• The fifth season: It’s no wonder this series won 3 back to back hugo awards, speculative fiction turned fantasy turned back to speculative fiction again, narrative bold and daring, if you haven’t read them yet, AVOID THE DESCRIPTION FOR BOOK 2 AT ALL COSTS. MAJOR, MAJOR SPOILERS.

T. Kingfisher: Somehow delightfully charming, while channeling some of the most horrifying and existential angst I’ve ever read. Primarily fantasy, deals a lot with romance, or young adult.

• A wizard’s guide to defensive baking: Young girl starts her day at work in a bakery, in a world of small magic, discovering the scene of a murder. It only gets wilder from there, turning into a deep introspection on the failures necessary for a society to have to rely on heroism to protect it’s citizens.
• Paladin’s Grace: The romance novels, they’re a bit formulaic but I believe she has 7 planned… they’re all love stories about deeply damaged individuals, trying to find comfort and kindness after their berserker god dies. This is the first, and is a good introduction, they get more queer as the books go on, and they have amazing gnolls. This is where we get into some of the disturbing horrors though, including ceramic heads on spikes that are shoved into corpses to animate them. She does competency porn too, deep dives into various professions, paladin’s grace centers a perfumer so everything is described in scents and aromas, the other books have different professions that have perspective characters and they’re all delightfully well sourced.

Yoon Ha Lee: Trans man from Korea with a background in math, so you can imagine how weird and delightful his work is.

• Ninefox Gambit: Math is power, rituals are weapons, observing various sacrifices and rituals actually creates physical effects in the world and powers most of their technology. It’s military science fiction with a trans allegory deeply folded into it. It’s positively alien, but it has a lot of bones in korean folklore and D&D classes.

Scotto Moore: Playwright turned author, batshit crazy writing style, but it’s delightful.

• Battle of the Linguist Mages: This takes the whole VR concept and ramps it up to 11, has the second best opening compared to Gideon the Ninth. It’s all centered on a mmo called the sparkle dungeon, and the perspective character is the queen of the sparkle dungeon. It somehow kept finding ways to increase the scope and scale, seriously impressive that it kept that up.

Tamsyn Mur: Meme queen and lesbian trash goblin, I love her. She wrote books for trash goblin lesbians that she wanted to see growing up.

• Gideon the Ninth - One of the most ambitious, silly, yet incredible books I’ve read, had me hooked from page 1, she has a gift for character development in record time. There’s a lot of characters to juggle (around 20, at first), but it is a delight.
• Harrow the Ninth - Second entry, difficult, challenging, and DEEPLY rewarding. Second person, but worth it. I don’t want to give much more away on this one.

Ada Palmer: Renaissance Scholar turned science fiction author, wanted to present a world in which feminism partially succeeds, but also showcasing how it can fail. Deeply political.

• Too like the lightning: I hesitate to recommend these as they are dense, political, deeply weird, unreliable narrator, but showcase one of the most fascinating societies I’ve ever read about. It’s not just post scarcity, but post distance, what happens to society when people are able to traverse the entire world in a matter of an hour? What happens when every need is met, when people forget how to fight wars, when people forget conflict? The society aggressively uses gender neutral language, pronouns default to they/them, but the narrator genders people as a means to characterize them, characters with matronly or feminine traits are given she/her, etc. It’s really interesting.

QNTM: The big ideas guy, ideas over characterization but wow does his ideas get big.

• There is no antimemetics division: bold, daring, ridiculous, how do you fight a foe that the world forgets? How do you fight an enemy that can erase your troops from observation?
• Ra: What if magic was just another branch of engineering? Again, big on ideas, ridiculous in scale, but not the deepest characters.

Sam Sykes: He wears his inspirations on his sleeve, and it’s better for it.

• The city stained red: chaotic neutral D&D party faces consequences and goes on a wild adventure accidentally potentially ending the world.
• Seven Blades in Black: Final fantasy 6’s world of ruin mixed with cowboy bebop serves this bisexual murderhobo revenge fantasy. Quips, wit, and gallows humor are his signature in this one. It’s long, self-indulgent, and a really fun ride, great worldbuilding too.

Martha Wells: One of the few authors that actually captures the way I both communicate in text and writes with ADHD parenthetical asides to brilliant effect:

• All Systems Red: Murderbot diaries, a classic series of novellas that are about a robot with social anxiety that hacks itself to save its crew. Just a fantastic rumination on what it means to be human, and what it means to be sentient.