Nona the Ninth

Again, Muir has a character with no context or awareness of the world around them, struggling to understand what is happening — and again, she nails it. I understand that this book is controversial in the fandom, but I'm an out-and-out Nona fan. By shrinking the scope of her work and zooming in on a neighbourhood struggling under the Houses' fascist rule, Muir brings context, grace and humanity into an intergalactic-ten-thousand-year space opera while recontextualising thanergy, "death energy", as what it really is: extractive murder that consolidates power for the powerful.