The city of Ora is watching.
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from S. Qiouyi Lu’s In the Watchful City, a multifaceted story of borders, power, diaspora, and transformation—available August 31st from Tordotcom Publishing.
Andrea Stewart’s debut novel The Bone Shard Daughter, the first book in the Drowning Empire trilogy, follows four intertwining stories in a vast and rich world inspired by Asian cultures.
Lin is the heir to the throne of the Phoenix Empire, but her father, the current emperor, refuses to recognize her status until she proves herself worthy to him. Trapped in a palace of locked doors, Lin hatches a plan to learn forbidden bone shard magic and overtake her rival Bayan to get her father’s approval.
Parasite made history in 2020 when it became the first film not in English to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. Director Bong Joon-ho’s success is groundbreaking in the conversation about diversity in Hollywood—from the United States’ side. Hollywood may only now be opening its doors to South Korean cinema, but the door has always been open in the other direction. Bong Joon-ho directs with a transnationalist, Korean lens on Hollywood tropes and expectations; his work is part of a long conversation South Korea has been having about Hollywood and the United States’ cultural influence on the world.
All her life Sylvia has made sure to never let anyone see the centipedes that emerge from her body. It’s gross and impolite. Until finally she reaches her breaking point. This is a speculative exploration of rape culture and hiding pain in favor of others’ pleasure.
Last week marked the publication of Premee Mohamed’s debut novel Beneath the Rising (Solaris), a hotly anticipated tale of cosmic horror and adventure. Equal parts hilarious and heart-wrenching, Beneath the Rising deeply subverts the oppressive foundations of Lovecraft’s vision of cosmic horror. In doing so, Mohamed joins Paul Krueger, author of the standalone epic fantasy novel Steel Crow Saga (Del Rey, 2019), in uprooting some of the core assumptions we have about the speculative fiction genre’s traditions and conventions.
