We’re thrilled to share the cover of Honey Watson’s Lessons in Birdwatching, a darkly comic, politically charged novel set in a post-earth future, where beings—human and otherwise—careen towards annihilation in service of zealotry and nihilism alike. Available August 8, 2023 from Angry Robot Books.
Lessons in Birdwatching is a darkly comic, politically charged novel set in a post-earth future, where beings—human and otherwise—careen towards annihilation in service of zealotry and nihilism alike.
During their temporary research post on Apech—a planet ravaged by a time distorting illness—Wilhelmina Ming and four other elite students of the Crysthian empire have witnessed such illogical brutality that they’ve resorted to psychedelic antidepressants and group sex to take the edge off. After a night of indulgence following a gruesome execution, they wake to find an oblique warning in the form of an impaled corpse dangling from the exterior of their residence.
When their subsequent investigation uncovers a web of collusion and conspiracy in the ranks of their own diplomatic corps, the envoys find themselves caught in the middle of a bloody civil war. As bodies pile up above ground, a deranged fanatic stokes an existential threat below, coaxing the embers of a forgotten god, and its temporal virus, to life.
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Lessons in Birdwatching
Honey Watson is a doctoral student with New York University’s Department of Comparative Literature, where she specializes in representations of individuality in contemporary Chinese novels and film. She is also a translator of both fiction and non-fiction from Mandarin into English, holding degrees from University College London and Peking University, Beijing. Outside of academia she writes speculative fiction in downtown Vegas dive bars. Fan of fashion, ice hockey, and sci-fi.
