Happy Wednesday, my friends! Today's #DecemberBookRec is The Stars are Legion, by @Kameronhurley. It is an ooey gooey squishy gushy exercise in space opera and body horror, and in my opinion a superlative standalone introduction to the Hurley aesthetic. Do you want to read about people birthing pieces of organic worldships? No, actually, you do. God, this book is so gross. I love it so much.

#DecRecs #Bookstodon #sff #spaceOpera

https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/19dd1886-b72b-4d13-8baa-ea95eb34eae6

What's this? Another day, another #DecemberBookRec? Why yes, indeedy!

Get you some Nicky Drayden in your lives. Escaping Exodus is a wonderful book about massive space beasts and social upheaval and love and rebellion and generation ships with a FASCINATING approach to class and shipboard maintenance.

(It also has something to say about juggling the equally pressing matters of environmental degradation and social injustice.)

((Also queer.))

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https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/6b6e3065-2add-4e1b-8509-ed0bf571251a

Good morning, shop and followers! Today's #DecemberBookRec is Flyaway, by Kathleen Jennings. It starts out as a moody tale in which a young narrator, keenly aware of how to be good and sweet and tidy and domestic, tells us about her life in a way that makes it clear that something terrible happened to her father and brothers, and her mother is controlling her in some way to make sure she never thinks about it or asks questions or remembers what happens.
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Today's #DecemberBookRec is The Mask of Mirrors, by MA Carrick, the pen-name of Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms. This is a wonderful, lush fantasy with a richly built city setting where everything is shaped by the interplay of two cultures that were forced into contact when one conquered the other and built a city on top of them.

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https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/9975504d-8095-49a1-a294-48894047cc2e

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Oh, no, I forgot yesterday's #DecemberBookRec. Well, that means two #DecRecs for today.

1. Miss Buncle's Book, by DE Stevenson. In this sly, witty, charming novel, an aging spinster in need of cash writes a roman a clef about her small town, laying bare all the secrets and hidden potentials of her neighbours for the world to see. Hijinks ensue when the book becomes a wild success.

(I've heard the ebook is badly formatted, so get the print edition)

https://persephonebooks.co.uk/products/miss-buncle-s-book?_pos=31&_sid=5fb00d15f&_ss=r&variant=31828814692419

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Today I started listening to the fifth Johannes Cabal book on the way to work, which insults everyone who has not yet read the first four, and praises the intelligence, wisdom, and appearance of everyone who has.

So, since no less a personage than @JonathanLHoward himself has assured me that I am smart and wise and of above-average appearance, I thought I would teach you how to be like me.

Start with Joannes Cabal, Necromancer, by Jonathan L Howard.

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Hello hello! Today's #DecemberBookRec is A Face Like Glass, by Frances Hardinge. Hardinge writes books mostly classified as YA, but I find them rich and beautiful and complex in ways that many books marketed for adults would be hard pressed to match.

THis is a world where facial expressions must be learned, taught, bought, until they become status symbols. A brilliant conceit--and yet, the rest of the world is equally marvelous. . .

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Today's #DecemberBookRec is The Binding, by Bridget Collins, a tale about books, the ethics of creating them, the ethics of reading them; about memory and magic and love and loss; and a fabulous conceit of worldbuilding that I will not detail here because the experience of reading this book will be all the richer if you go in unknowing.

Suffice it to say that, in this book, becoming absorbed in a riveting story is not an innocent pleasure.

https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/ab13b9b3-2aba-423b-829f-ae61d76206a6

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Happy Monday! Today's #DecemberBookRec is The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson, a fabulously twisty political secondary world thriller, about colonialism and resistance and bringing the empire down from the inside and subterfuge and uneasy allies and pirates and clever tax codes and sneaky macroeconomic policy and people being really, really fucking good at what they do.

Here's my review: https://dampskunk.wordpress.com/2020/07/28/the-traitor-baru-cormorant-2015-by-seth-dickinson/

https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/299846e6-b438-4c45-ab0d-25593b7bef28

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