Musical Mechas and the Dystopian Dust Bowl: December’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books

I don’t always highlight SFF sequels in these monthly lists, but I’m trying to be better about doing so, because so many book series suffer in sales if readers are waiting until they’re complete to buy all of them, instead of following along (or at least buying, even if you read later!) with each new release. It so happens that 2024 is ending on a note of “to be continued”—that is, a number of this month’s books are direct or standalone sequels. The world may be burning (again) (in several senses of the word), but life continues on. These books bring hope in that there are always new stories to tell, from a cli-fi retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear to a comic book thriller to an amnesia plague. These books are joyfully and defiantly queer; they challenge closed-mindedness and xenophobia; they engage directly with the issues literally changing the surface of our planet. They are all worth the read.

Gabrielle Korn, The Shutouts
(St. Martin’s Press, December 3)

In last year’s Yours for the Taking, culture writer Gabrielle Korn transplanted an increasingly familiar story—woman gets offer to join exclusive enclave, only to discover the sinister secrets behind this #girlboss cabal—into a dystopian future. When Ava gets the chance to enter The Inside Project, protected from climate change and civil unrest, she must leave behind her girlfriend Orchid, who does not make the cut. The Shutouts is a sequel set almost 40 years later, as Ava and her daughter Brook escape from Inside and their terrible existence being experimented on. And who do they meet but Orchid, who has become a survivalist and is looking to rescue Ava before linking back up with her climate refugee group. It’s a smart move, following up the first book with the perspective of those not invited to join the elite project, grimly facing how the outside world has changed.

Alex White, Ardent Violet and the Infinite Eye
(Orbit Books, December 3)

In August Kitko and the Mechas from Space, the titular jazz pianist discovered the way to defend Earth from invading mechas was to bond with our world’s own Vanguard war machines. And on the way, he fell for Ardent Violet, the enby glam rocker whose end-of-the-world party he was playing at the start of the series. But their happily-ever-after is interrupted by the arrival of the alien Coalition, paired with their own Vanguards, who want to defend Earth against an all-consuming AI called Infinite. Gus and Ardent might have thought they’d figured out cooperation in the first installment of the Starlight Symphony trilogy, but now they have to take collaboration to a whole new level, across extraterrestrial cultural divides, with the fate of humanity’s consciousness hanging in the balance.

Julia Armfield, Private Rites
(Flatiron Books, December 3)

While Julia Armfield’s previous novel Our Wives Under the Sea dredges up the eerie fallout of a deep-sea explorer spending far too much time stuck underwater, the three sisters at the heart of her cli-fi King Lear retelling struggle to stay afloat amidst all manner of grief. In a near-future where ferries replace trains to cross the ever-rising tidewaters, estranged siblings Isla, Irene, and Agnes reluctantly reunite after the death of their father. Architect Stephen Carmichael found cruel ways to abuse the girls and turn them on one another, the wounds not yet healed in adulthood; he twists the knife further by bequeathing one of his creations, a stunning glass house, to Agnes alone. Between swallowing resentments to arrange Stephen’s funeral, and handling bizarre confrontations with strangers, the sisters must push past their adolescent trauma, lest they drown in the flood to come.

Alex Segura, Alter Ego
(Flatiron Books, December 3)

I’ll slightly stretch the speculative limits of this list for Alex Segura’s follow-up to Secret Identity, both thrillers set within the world of comic books. The former specifically inhabits the 1970s and the creation of the Lethal Lynx, as illustrator Carmen Valdez must investigate the murder of her co-author (and the only one getting credit) Harvey Stern before the Lynx gets pulled from shelves and Carmen winds up with a bullet to the head as well. Set in the present day, Alter Ego follows filmmaker and comic book artist Annie Bustamante as she attempts to secure the rights to the Lethal Lynx. But as she delves into the character’s dark past, she has to decide if the threats on her life, and what she discovers, are worth rebooting the first comic superhero she ever adored.

Alison Stine, Dust
(Wednesday Books, December 3)

Alison Stine’s Trashlands not only delivered a bleak near-future, but its ruminations on the concepts of what—and who—we consider trash, and what it means to recycle, have stuck with me for years after reading. So I’m eagerly awaiting her speculative YA debut, about a teen who discovers unexpected community even as a new Dust Bowl bears down on Bloodless Valley, Colorado. Thea’s father uproots their family from Ohio based on a premonition, but he seems to steer them toward doom in their new home, besieged by black blizzards and barren land. Isolated from her peers by her father’s restrictive homeschooling, Thea, who is hard of hearing, meets Ray, who is deaf. As he secretly teaches her to sign, Thea fears the impending dust storms and her family’s unwillingness to ask for help, which could threaten not only their quality of life but their actual lives.

Karina Sainz Borgo, trans. Elizabeth Bryer, No Place to Bury the Dead
(HarperVia, December 10)

Imagine a plague that infects people with amnesia. It’s the kind of haunting, lyrical exploration of the pandemic subgenre that also speaks to non-genre readers, playing with how people choose to forget one another after tragedy. Here, Augustias Romero and her estranged husband Salveiro are split by the deaths of their infant twins and how to go forward. Salveiro would leave them in the morgue and continue on, but Augustias forges ahead to Mezquite, a border town with an illegal cemetery called Third Country, where they can receive a proper burial. But the cemetery’s overseer, Visitación Salazar, can only do so much to defend against corrupt landowner Alcides Abundio. The women’s attempts at establishing a sanctuary are threatened by human greed as well as the creep of the plague and its sweeping dissolution of memories.

Erin K. Wagner, Mechanize My Hands to War
(DAW, December 17)

Erin K. Wagner’s Appalachia-set AI cyberpunk drama hooks into humanity’s fears about robots stealing our jobs, jumping nonlinearly across time and across political divides. In 2060 and 2061, an ATF raid on Eli Whitaker’s Civil Union militia culminates in an android killing a child. But Whitaker himself, staunchly anti-android, instead enlists child soldiers into his so-called army. And ATF director Adrian Hall has her own complicated past with Whitaker, as does special agent Trey Caudill. Finally, Ora, the supposedly killer robot, is trying to figure out why he feels so awful if there is nothing technically wrong with him. I can’t wait to read how Wagner tackles the humanity of robots and the inhumanity of mankind.