20 fantasy and science fiction books to read in February 2024
By Daniel Roman
REDSIGHT by Meredith Mooring — February 27
Next up we have another debut with Meredith Mooring's Redsight. This book is a space opera which follows Korinna, a blind priestess whose universe is turned upside when her ship is attacked by a notorious pirate...who then gives her a chance to use her powerful magic to forge her own destiny rather than remain a pawn to the Imperium which has raised her as a living weapon. Throw in queer romance, a dogged chase from an imperial warrior, and a space witch coming into her power, and it sounds like an epic read.
Korinna has simple priorities: stay on the Navitas, stay out of trouble, and stay alive. She may be a Redseer, a blind priestess with the power to manipulate space-time, but she is the weakest in her Order. Useless and outcast. Or so she has been raised to believe.
As she takes her place as a navigator on an Imperium ship, Korinna’s full destiny is revealed to her: blood brimming with magic, she is meant to become a weapon of the Imperium, and pawn for the Order that raised her. But when the ship is attacked by the notorious pirate Aster Haran, Korinna’s world is ripped apart.
Aster has a vendetta against the Imperium, and an all-consuming, dark power that drives her to destroy everything in her path. She understands the world in a way Korinna has never imagined, and Korinna is drawn to her against her better judgment.
With the Imperium and the justice-seeking warrior Sahar hot on her heels, Korinna must choose her side, seize her power and fulfil her destiny—or risk imperiling the future of the galaxy, and destroying the fabric of space-time itself.
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TOMORROW'S CHILDREN by Daniel Polansky — February 27
We near the end of our journey through the books of February with a stop in post-apocalyptic Manhattan for Tomorrow's Children by Daniel Polansky, author of The Builders. In a near-distant future where the city is divided into separate "fiefdoms" which war with one another for turf and supplies, choking mist causes strange mutations in anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in them.
I doubt I'm alone in being eager to get a look at Amazon's new Fallout show, but if you can't wait months for the post-apocalypse to begin, Tomorrow's Children may be a great way to start getting in the mood.
Tomorrow, the funk descends on Manhattan, a noxious cloud which separates the island from the rest of the world and mutates the population. Some generations on, the surviving population exists amid the rubble of modernity, wearing our cast-off clothing, worshipping celebrities as dim gods and using emojis in place of written language. The Island exists in a state of uneasy peace, with each neighborhood an independent fiefdom, protecting itself with scrap metal spears and Molotov cocktails.
But something new has come to the Island, the first tourist in centuries, and this uneasy equilibrium is about to shatter…