A bit after the 2022 Self-Published Science Fiction Competition kicked off I made a post about five books from the competition I’d found good enough to finish. I’m back now with eight more!
These aren’t selected from all the entrants. I was looking exclusively at books available on Kindle Unlimited and I only gave a book a shot if it appealed to me on some level. In the course of finishing these eight books, I bailed on… 24 other books.
The books I present to you include:
- a rewrite of a Roman satirist’s travelogue of his trip to the moon
- a fascinating science fantasy adventure/mystery
- a YA book about an alien raised to think she was human
- a gritty book that may make you uncomfortable about your devotion to your digital life
- a morally ambiguous space adventure with military and political themes
- a YA series that’s nothing like Animorphs but reminds me of it vaguely
- my favorite book from the SPSFC entries I’ve read and the start of a satisfying completed trilogy
All work for the “self-published” square on the 2022 Fantasy bingo sheet, but I’ve noted the other squares I believe each could be used to fulfill as well
Ad Luna by Huw Steer
So, I’ve heard a lot of candidates for “First Science Fiction Writer.” Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish, etc. I hadn’t previously heard about this crazy-ass Roman named Lucian, who apparently lived in the 2nd century AD and decided to write an utterly fictitious travelogue where he visited all sorts of weird places (some with literal rivers of wine), but also the Moon and the Sun, and call it True History as a sort of knock on what he perceived as the inaccuracy of historians and travel writers.
Huw Steer apparently did a thesis on True History, and was so captivated by the thirteen pages spent in outer space that he decided to make a whole book out of it. Which, I gotta say, is just a fabulous origin story for a book. Caught my attention from the get-go.
It is a weird book! It’s based on the original story, and it carries through some of the original sensibilities. There was no reason for Lucian to consider some things less likely than others, so yeah, why not jump on that three-headed giant vulture with the rest of your army platoon and fly out into outer space to fight the Lord of the Sun? I was frequently reminded of the Oz books by L. Frank Baum, I think just due to the unapologetic commitment to absurdities.
There were some things about the book that didn’t click well for me (some things got solved too easily, some characters landed a bit flat for me), but I still liked it enough to read it to the end.
Read this if: You really want something different, you like the idea of reading something inspired by such an early piece of science fiction
Fulfills Fantasy Bingo Squares: Self-Published, Non-Human Protagonist, No Ifs, Ands, or Buts
NACL: Eye of the Storm by Allegra Pescatore and E. Sands
The framing device for this book is done really well. In between chapters of an adventure story you’re treated to interludes with an awakening AI – an AI, we find out very early on, that used to be a living being. The interludes are a dialogue between this new AI and an advanced but nonsapient script as the AI waits for a patch to complete. While patching, the only activities it can do are creating a to-do list and querying its database.
As the story goes on, you start getting ideas and hints of who the AI is, or used to be, which adds a fun mystery element to the story.
I also really enjoyed the setting. Essentially, NACL is set on a world created by two beings with godlike power but not godlike wisdom. They did a kind of trash job at it, and they’ve created many eccentricities and issues in their efforts to fix other problems. It’s quite well thought-out and justifies clearly why such a messed up artificial-esque place would exist: the “gods” finally got their shitty trash pile of a world to balance and are afraid to touch it for fear it will all collapse.
I wish the title was a little better. I feel like it’s the weakest thing about the book.
Read this if: You like interesting worldbuilding, you like books that straddle the line between fantasy and science.
Fulfills Fantasy Bingo Squares: Two or More Authors, Self-Published, Author Uses Initials
Space Girl from Earth by Christina McMullen
This book is odd, as it reads like a typical YA book, but the protagonist is actually college-aged and has a generally more mature and pragmatic approach to the challenges she faces. She thinks of herself as human, but is technically not. If you dislike settings where aliens are often: “humans, now in blue!” this book is not for you.
That said, it’s a fun and well-written adventure that’s appropriate for any age reader… while not falling into many of the common YA traps.
Read this if: You like YA and sci-fi.
Fulfills Fantasy Bingo Squares: Non-Human Protagonist, Self-Published, Family Matters, No Ifs, Ands, or Buts (hard mode)
Syn City: Reality Bytes by Lewis Knight
One protagonist of this book is a former criminal working off her sentence as, effectively, a slave mercenary. The other, Specter, is a shut-in with tech-hopping mental powers who values his virtual life and connections over the real world. Specter was a little uncomfortable to read as someone who may have stayed up too late playing video games a time or eight, but that discomfort shows Knight pulled something interesting off here.
I also read the book to the finish in spite of not thinking either protagonist was a particularly good or likable person. So… dark plot and unlikable-yet-compelling protagonists.
Read this if: You like darker adventure stories that make you think a little
Fulfills Fantasy Bingo Squares: Anti-Hero, Self-Published. No Ifs, Ands, or Buts (hard mode)
Star Marque: Rising by Shami Stovall
There were a few things I quite liked about this book. I found the idea of a superhuman elite class suppressing a human underclass believable. Clevon, the protagonist, signs on to the ship of a star captain attempting to fight the social order from within the system, ruthlessly doing what she needs to do to be the first human assigned to the post of planetary governor. To earn this from the superhumans, she helps put down rebellious humans and do shadowy work from her political patrons. It puts the reader in an interesting place, because… if the rebellion really does have no chance, isn’t working within the system the best thing the captain can do for humanity? And yet, it’s hard to look at most of their actions as anything but a tragedy.
Read this if: You want an adventure story with political themes and moral ambiguity
Fulfills Fantasy Bingo Squares: Anti-Hero, Self-Published, No Ifs, Ands, or Buts (hard mode)
The Left Hand of Dog by Si Clarke
Okay, before you go in on this one, you wanna make sure you’ve taken your suspension of disbelief out of the closet, dusted it off, refueled it, and maybe given it a little tune-up. This is a story that doesn’t take itself too seriously. By some glitch, the protagonist’s dog is arrested as some kind of space criminal, and the protagonist is taken along as her dog’s responsible adult or “left hand.” The plot that follows is very silly, but actually has quite a bit of good sci-fi thinking to it. I think the thing I enjoyed most was the way that the “universal translator” worked. The biggest caveat, other than the admittedly silly plot, would be that there’s some rather heavy-handed moralizing on social issues from time to time.
Read this if: You want some silly sci-fi. You like extremely non-human aliens.
Fulfills Fantasy Bingo Squares: Set in Space, Self-Published
Blackcoats: Dead Man Walking by Michael Lachman
Adam’s dad is just a normal scientist, right? Well, one day the dad disappears, and his Adam realizes his employer was anything but normal… and now, Adam might be anything but normal too. His dad’s secret organization gets ahold of Adam and tells him his normal life was over. A fun tale of adventure, mystery, secret monsters, and kids having to deal with stuff out of their age range. The main character isn’t a shapechanger, but I still got some slight Animorphs vibes from this.
Read this if: You like YA with some creepy aliens/monsters, secret organizations, and adults endangering children because, hey, we’ve got no one better to deal with this.
Fulfills Fantasy Bingo Squares: Self-Published, Family Matters
The Stars Within by Lena Alison Knight
I really liked this book, enough so that I actually read the other two books in the completed trilogy. It’s set in a future where humanity spans multitudes of solar systems, if not galaxies. There’s some form of unified government, but it’s slow and conservative, so in practice, most planets and peoples are governed by the corporation who has managed to strongarm them into a contract allowing them to do so.
In addition, some vanishingly small minority of people have psionic powers. Corporations, playing on the fear people have of these powers, have essentially enforced the mandatory enslavement of all psions by whatever corporation has jurisdiction in the area of their birth. The protagonist, Kerelle, is one of the most powerful (and thus best-treated) psions for her corporation. Her lack of freedom chafes, as does the unsavory things she’s forced to do, but she keeps her head down and toes the company line for the sake of someone she loves, a fellow psion. When he’s moved to a place she can likely never reach, even by mind, it’s devastating. When she finds evidence he’s being mistreated, it’s infuriating. She resolves to look for an opportunity to do the impossible: escape.
Fulfills Fantasy Bingo Squares: Set in Space, Revolutions and Rebellions, Self-Published, Family Matters
