Award-winning author of The Red Scholar’s Wake, Aliette de Bodard, comes for your heart with a compelling tale of love, duty, and found-family in an exciting new space opera that brings xianxia-style martial arts to the stars…
We’re thrilled to share the cover of Aliette de Bodard’s Navigational Entanglements, a romantic, found-family space opera arriving July 30, 2024 from Tordotcom Publishing.
Jockeying navigator clans guide spaceships through the Hollows: an area of space populated by the mysterious but deadly creatures known as Tanglers. When a Tangler escapes the Hollows for the first time in living memory, each clan must send a representative to help capture it—but the mission may be doomed and the hearts of two clan juniors may be in danger too.
Việt Nhi is not good with people. Or politics. Which is a problem when the Rooster clan sends her on the mission against her will, forcing her to work with an ill-matched group of squabbling teammates from rival clans, including one who she can’t avoid, and maybe doesn’t want to.
Hạc Cúc of the Snake clan has always been better at poisoning and stabbing than at making friends, but she’s drawn to Nhi’s perceptiveness and obliviousness to social conventions—including the ones that really should make Nhi think twice about spending time with her.
But when their imperial envoy and nominal leader is poisoned, this crew of expendable apprentices will have to learn to work together—fast—before the invisible Tangler can wreak havoc on a civilian city and destroy the fragile reputation of the clans. Along the way, Nhi and Hạc Cúc will have to learn the hardest lesson of all: to see past their own misconceptions and learn to trust their growing feelings for each other.
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Early Praise for Navigational Entanglements:
“A deeply satisfying story of warring clans, ruthless politics, and the need to learn who and how to trust. All this and giant space jellyfish too!” —Kate Elliott
“A unique space adventure with evocative worldbuilding, Navigational Entanglements is a perfect bite-sized science fantasy. In between white-knuckle moments, de Bodard explores the inner lives of her characters and paints a vivid portrait of trauma, anxiety, bonding, and romance. The twisty, fast-paced plot is likely to keep you reading well past your bedtime!” —S.B. Divya, Hugo- and Nebula-nominated author of Meru
“Expertly mingling suspenseful space battles, political intrigue, clashing rivalries, tender romance, and the creation of a new found family, Navigational Entanglements is just dazzlingly good.” —Stephanie Burgis, author of Snowspelled
“An(other) inventive, empathetic Aliette de Bodard masterpiece that impeccably balances precision and vastness, tenderness and brutality.” —Samit Basu, author of The City Inside
Buy the Book
Navigational Entanglements
Aliette de Bodard writes speculative fiction: she has won three Nebula Awards, an Ignyte Award, a Locus Award and six British Science Fiction Association Awards. She is the author of A Fire Born of Exile, a sapphic Count of Monte Cristo in space (Gollancz/JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc., 2023), and of Of Charms, Ghosts and Grievances (JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc, 2022 BSFA Award winner), a fantasy of manners and murders set in an alternate 19th Century Vietnamese court. She lives in Paris.
