And finally, two sisters rely on their bond as they are ordered into service in a war against an alien threat in J. If you have ever wished your relatives were a little less up in your business, you’ll laugh at protagonist Briddey Flannigan’s clan in Connie Willis’s Crosstalk. When one must leave family behind in order to escape a dangerous cult, as Nell does in Faith Hunter’s Blood of the Earth, it does not mean they are forgotten. Cloudbound is a return to Fran Wilde’s hugely inventive world of bone towers and residents who strap on wings and take flight, but hero Nat’s dilemmas hinge on threats to his loved ones. Wagers’s Behind the Throne, as heroine Hail resumes her responsibilities at home that she rejected years before. Yet despite trappings of spaceships and magical creatures, speculative fiction still strives to tell human stories, and family-the one you’re born into, the one you make, or the one you choose-drives many sf/fantasy novels.ĭifficult family dynamics are at the heart of K.B.

Stories of families and family dysfunction seem like literary fiction territory.

Space opera refuge cyoa