10 new fantasy and sci-fi books to read in January 2023
By Daniel Roman
I KEEP MY EXOSKELETONS TO MYSELF by Marisa Crane (January 17)
The debut novel from Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself is a science fiction story set in a near-future United States where, rather than being sent to prison, wrongdoers are given extra shadows that mark them as criminals. These so-called Shadesters are shamed in public, stripped of their rights, and forced to live as second class citizens.
Kris is a Shadester, and also the new mother of a daughter mysteriously born with her own second shadow. As Kris mourns the loss of her wife, she’s forced to face her own demons in order to raise her new daughter, connecting with a community of other misfits along the way. Featuring lyrical prose and an exploration of “the long shadow of grief, the hard work of parenting, and the power of queer resistance,” I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself is definitely a novel to watch out for you if you enjoy mind-bending stuff like Black Mirror.
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THE KEEPER’S SIX by Kate Elliot (January 17)
Kate Elliot is the author of more than two dozen fantasy and science fiction novels as well as a ton of short fiction. As such, it can be somewhat daunting to know where to start with her work, but her latest book, The Keeper’s Six, is a novella that stands on its own, making it accessible whether it’s your first Kate Elliot book or your fifteenth.
The Keeper’s Six is the story of Esther, a “bad-ass, spell-slinging mother” who has to go on a world-hopping quest to find her missing son.
There are terrors that dwell in the space between worlds.
It’s been a year since Esther set foot in the Beyond, the alien landscape stretching between worlds, crossing boundaries of space and time. She and her magical travelling party, her Hex, haven’t spoken since the Concilium banned them from the Beyond. But when she wakes in the middle of the night to her son’s cry for help, the members of her Hex are the only ones she can trust to help her bring him back from wherever he has been taken.
Esther will have to risk everything to find him. Undercover and hidden from the Concilium, she and her Hex will be tested by dragon lords, a darkness so dense it can suffocate, and the bones of an old crime come back to haunt her.