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A City Dreaming (Astra Black, 3)

Maurice Broaddus

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The third and final book in a trilogy where the futuristic technology of Black Panther meets the scale of The Expanse and the intricate political maneuverings of Game of Thrones.

“Not to be missed.” — Washington Post on Sweep of Stars

Maurice Broaddus returns with A City Dreaming, the third book in his Astra Black trilogy, which explores the struggles of an empire. Epic in scope and intimate in voice, it follows members of the Muungano Empire—a far-reaching coalition of city-states that stretches from Earth to Titan and beyond—as it faces renewed threats to its progress.

We received a signal. Everything has changed.

The Interstellar Alliance are coming.

A new empire approaches and the Muungano, already facing foes much closer to home, will have to contend with what it means for their future. Across the solar system, from Earth to Mars and Titan, beyond the Orun Gate, and across time and space itself a battle will rage. Their soldiers, scientists, diplomats and leaders will all have a role to play if their empire is to live on.

The Astra Black series:

Sweep of Stars

Breath of Oblivion

A City Dreaming

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Posts about this title from Tattooed Bibliophiles

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Jun 5

\ \ OK listen, I can't keep up with this every week Tuesday releases shit, I missed all of May and I just realized it. I'm doing my best dahling, this is a hobby and nobody pays book influencers. And I don’t think you understand how long it takes to format these damn things with all the book pics, because I did it and copied it in here and lost it all, and that your attention span is already almost gone without a picture to distract your brain. I'm working on a really interesting article about the death of booktok, and I don’t want to suck more time away from that. You should watch out for it. (Hint hint)\ \ So I'm going to do a big slog into every month instead, tell you what's coming, give you a chance to get those preorders in and SUPPORT THOSE AUTHORS! So what's coming out this month? Well NOT Alecto the Ninth, my lamentatious lyctoral league.\ \ By genre:\ \ SPACE OPERA\ \ \ \ Recursion: Germinal Book 2 by Aric McBay (AK Press, indie) - June 9 – A pacifist society on a tiny green planet is invaded by Colonizers. I’ve had book 1 sitting on my shelf, because I cannot pass up fiction by AK Press, and I definitely need to pick up book 1 this week. It would be greeeeeeat if I could put down my phone and read a book. It’s summer and the kids need wifi free time too, so I guess I’ll be figuring out how to set up parental controls on the router this week, yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay\ \ \ \ The Forgetting Navigations by Marlee Jane Ward (Interstellar Flight Press, indie) - June 9 – Our main character has eMoTiOnAl dAmAgE from being abandoned in a lifepod in space. A freight hauler rescues her and they bond over tea. Then the past comes a knocking, as it does in stories. This may be more of a litfic in space thing, but it’s honestly hard to tell without reading. I feel like Space Opera implies more action, but subgenres are not a science, so you will have to judge a book by it’s description.\ \ \ \ The Sixth Nik by Daniel Kraus (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press) - June 2 – In a bioship capable of reacting to a crew’s every need, a nine year old cultist with a brain enhancement investigates a planet infected with a plague. The crew also includes an assassin, an engineer who has been jigsawwed together with surgeries, an addict medic, and a “nonmodded” captain who doesn’t like the nine year old, this has all the makings of a found family space opera.\ \ POST-APOCALYPTIC\ \ \ \ Earth 7 by Deb Olin Unferth (Graywolf, and Indie Press) - June 9 – Kind of a romance between a woman raised in a pod in the ocean and a woman who may or may not be a robot. But also earth is now a charcoal briquette and everyone has gone to Mars except a handful of holdouts trying to construct a molecular collection of Earth stuff for people to eventually repopulate. And what the hell is a soul globule? You’ll have to read Earth 7 to find out.\ \ \ \ The Withers by Lee Upton (Regal House Publishing) - June 23 – I mean kinda dystopian but also kind of a thriller, this is a post epidemic book where scars from the disease are called withers. A woman is living with the surgeon who saved her and his preggo wife, in a world where organ traffickers roam the streets. They have to fight to protect the woman and her fetus, and they’re calling this a “Grimm’s fairytale” like story.\ \ SPECULATIVE / LITERARY SCI-FI\ \ \ \ Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim (Macmillan/Tor) - June 2 – Imagine you immigrate to a new country. But the rule is, you get cloned, and only the clone gets to go and you have to stay. You’re cut in two, and you can keep in touch with your other self or not. The MC of this book does not, until she’s called back to Korea for a funeral. She doesn’t know that her original self plans to switch places with her. Obviously, this is a deep dive into the psychological effects of immigration. Do you love the Doppelgängers trope?\ \ \ \ Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Macmillan/Tor) - June 2 – Genetically engineered animals do the work while humans relax in the sun. A racoon is hired to track down a very important mouse. Why is the mouse important? It has something everyone wants. A familiar story if told about humans, but I’m interested to see it told from animals perspective. I’ve never read an Adrian Tchaikovsky book, any of my scifi besties want to give me some opinions on whether I should?\ \ \ \ Our Sister's Keeper by Jasmine Holmes (Bindery/Mareas Books, indie) - June 9 – In a fantasy retelling of a 1920’s era all-Black free town, women known as “carriers” pull traumatic memories from men so that the town is populated with men free of their pain, while the remnants of the past haunt the women. In a world where we expect Black Women to save us all, this book is an exploration of what it’s like to live with that expectation.\ \ \ \ Voyagers by Meg Charlton (HarperCollins) - June 16 – a signal arrives from the edge of the solar system in a first contact story. While everyone on earth loses their collective shit, Alex’s old wounds are opened, because two decades ago, she and her friend Ana were abducted at age six. After which followed a media frenzy no child should endure, especially not after some trauma like that. Ana went on to be an advocate for the abducted while Alex tried to move on and forget. But now they are drawn back together in a story about friendship, family, and truth. \ \ \ \ A City Dreaming by Maurice Broaddus, Book 3 in the Astra Black series (Macmillan/Tor) - June 30 – This series follows a young political leader, a woman in an elite military unit, and a captain of a starship, who are all part of the Muungano empire, a coalition of city states that stretches from Old Earth to Titan, in their quest to form an empire free of endless wars and oppression. This Afrofuturist spec fic series deserves a lot more press than it gets. Come on Tor, do better in your promotion!!!\ \ \ \ The Moon Papers by Emmalea Russo (Arcade Publishing, Skyhorse) - June 30 – A controversial arts collective is going to launch a second moon from the Mojave Desert into Earth’s atmosphere in a project they are calling Moon 2. I am deeply concerned, but the book is coined as raucous, psychedelic, and humorous, which I am translating as publisher speak for, they think it’s funny as shit. But the description isn’t, so someone isn’t doing marketing properly. IDK, I need a preview to see if it’s any good.\ \ \ \ The Young Die Old by Nguyễn Bình Phương with Khải Q. Nguyễn (translator) (Major Books, indie) - June 30 – This may be more of a fantasy, but in my searches for sci-fi it keeps popping up so the author must have filed it this way somewhere. Two feuding families fight for control of a buried treasure, but there reality blurs with hallucination, as spirits, doppelgängers, and collective guilt haunt the living. A society grapples with the aftershocks of war, repression, and silence, with a generation of children who age prematurely under the weight of unspoken histories. You won't find this one on Amazon, and hells yeah, fuck Bezos! You can find it here.\ \ TIME TRAVEL\ \ \ \ The Traveler by Joseph Eckert (Macmillan/Tor) - June 2 – at 7:51am, Scott Treder slips forward through time 24 hours. And every day, he slips again, losing double the amount of time each time slip. And while everyone ages normally, he doesn’t. His son ages beyond him. Years pass by in his marriage. It’s giving Click with Adam Sandler. I wonder how different it will be. Yall, this cover sucks. Nobody is going to buy this book based on this cover, what are you doing Tor???\ \ \ \ Retro by Jessica M. Goldstein (Penguin Random House/Ballantine) - June 23 – An out of work actress takes a job as a time travel tour guide at a company called Retro, taking wealthy tourists on vacations to historical hot spots. She loves it, thrilling in the romance of an office crush and a 1937 private eye pursuing her. But slowly she notices some strange things happening to her memory and her relationships outside of Retro, and escaping into the past was never really an escape at all. I am wildly interested to see if this speaks to the escapism we justify with Netflix and doom scrolling and romance reading in the present.\ \ ROMANCE\ \ \ \ Moss'd in Space by Rebecca Thorne (Macmillan/Bramble) - June 30 – from the author of A Pirate’s Life for Tea comes this cozy sci-fi romance about a starship captain who purchases a ship covered in Moss with an organic computer inside with a snarky attitude who loathes it’s builder because the immortal alien abandoned it. NGL, snarky AI’s in ships used to be my jam, but the way I’ve been feeling about real AI may change my enjoyment of them.\ \ \ \ Plastic, Prism, Void by Violet Allen (LittlePuss Press, indie) – May 19 (shut your mouth, I missed this one and it deserves attention. It's pride month and this cover deserves praise alone, and that's before I've touched the book! Sue me. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.) Trans enemies to lovers in which a magical girl-gone-bad and a renegade mech pilot must find a way to stay on a date forever...even if it means destroying the world.\ \ THRILLER\ \ \ \ The Other by Annie Neugebauer (Shortwave Publishing, indie) - June 9 – this is a Book 2 Outsiders Sequence, which is a novella series. I’ve never read a novella series but I think I could get into that! Ten people head out on a backpacking trip, but the first night eleven set up camp. Everyone remembers everyone else. Who is the extra? That’s the premise of the first book. This one is about a couple on an outdoor retreat who meet their doppelgangers.\ \ \ \ Obstetrix by Naomi Kritzer (Macmillan/Tordotcom) - June 2 – An out of work OBGYN who has gotten publicly crucified for offering abortion care is kidnapped by a cult to help birth their babies. And she gets kidnapped on page friggin 10. If you’ve been in a slump this one’s for you, I read it in a single sitting, and I have 3 kids at home for the summer while I’m trying to run a business. I generally don’t DO that. Crazy, seat of your pants, worth a read.\ \ \ \ Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay (HarperCollins/Morrow) - June 2 – So this semi professional gamer gets a nepotism job piloting a man in a vegetative state across the country, Weekend at Bernie’s style. He has an AI implant in his head and she can control his body using a cell phone. But he’s not dead. He’s living this grotesque hellscape where he doesn’t remember who he is or why there’s a rabbit tattoo on his arm. Their stories intertwine and they end up fugitives. Noooo, I didn’t give the plot twist away – it was right there in the book description!\ \ ANTHOLOGY\ \ \ \ Ring Shout on Saturn by Sheree Renée Thomas (Third Man Books, indie) - June 9 – Afrofuturist short stories that range from a prophet building a starship (very Noah’s Arc) to alien sisters navigating human complexities. And that cover? That’s an AMAZING cover and I’m here for it. This is actually book2 of the three book The Root and Sky series, but they're all short stories so there's no reason you can't go ahead and preorder this one, read it, then get the rest!\ \ \ \ And an honorable mention to Lovecraft: Selected Stories, one of the Chiltern Classics being released on June 9. If you want to know more about my obsession with this set, read this. Or don't. Sometimes I'm convinced I'm living in a silo and nobody is reading any of this anyway. Either way, it's good practice writing, no?\ \ See you next week. Because I'm still writing blogs, they just won't all be book lists of upcoming stuff. I need creative time as well as research time to feed my soul AND brain! (But not AI. Never that.)\ \ — Zee\ \

- *\ \ If you liked this and want more of whatever THIS is (unhinged book analysis, barely contained rage at the state of the world, and occasional Tamsyn Muir references and em dashes that I will never apologize for) consider subscribing for $5/month. Every cent goes to people who actually need it, because I have a day job and a cause, not a brand deal. This is my middle finger to Big 5 publishing, dressed up as a book blog. Come hold it up with me.](https://tattooedbibliophile.binderybooks.com/item/Qz2POvbnW0wbEMBxdWvR/)

6/3/26 - New Sci-fi Titles This Month

19 books

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Nov 11 2025

\ \ Every time I try to figure out what is coming next for sci-fi, I am inundated with lists coining "Sci-Fi and Fantasy Releases" that are ALL FANTASY. \ \ And listen, I love fantasy, I adore fantasy, but give me some damn science fiction ok?\ \ And before you say " but I'm already living in a dystopian society and I need to escape reality" I need you to take a PAUSE babes - and listen to what I'm about to say. (STOP. Collaborate and Listen. Zee is back with some brand new fiction) \ \ Science Fiction is our hope and imagination for the future. Fantasy helps you to escape reality, but Sci-Fi helps you imagine a better world. It fills your cup, renews your soul, gives you the strength to go on because you know things can be better - you've SEEN IT. And yes, it was in a book, but if you can dream of a dark and handsome man who does his own laundry and has good hygeine, my sister/brother/enby sibling in Christ, you can dream of a better world.\ \ So now I'll jump off the soap box and into the deep end of Sci-fi books I'm really excited for. And I'm begging you to leave me some comments for some more, especially indie authors because those are harder to find. And you know what's great about Bindery...all the books are tagged below and ready for preorder!\ \ 01. Hell’s Heart by Alexis Hall (Tor Books, March 10, 2026)\ \ Alexis Hall is a gender nonconforming person from southeast England and is the prolific author of well-known books like A Lady for a Duke and Boyfriend Material. \ \ \ \ Two things sold me on this book: \ \ #1: It is coined as "Sapphic Moby Dick in Space." If you take any classic and add "sapphic" to the beginning and "in space" to the end of it, I'm definetely going to read it. I am an absolute SIMP for this mashup.\ \ #2: The blurb is Gideon the Ninth meets Moby-Dick. STFU Alexis Hall + Gideon the Ninth??? Yes, mmhmm, please and thank you give me 27 more.\ \ " What's it Actually ABOUT Zee?" WELL bestie. sips tea It's a meet cute in space where Earth is dead and bounty hunters hunt space monsters to use their spinal fluid for fuel to power atmospheric domes on planets that will kill us if we blink wrong. Hell to the yeah. I've gotten my grubby paws on an ARC of this, I'll let you know how it goes.\ \ 02. And Side by Side They Wander by Molly Tanzer (Tordotcom, May 19, 2026)\ \ Molly Tanzer is a sci-fi writer/manga translator and prominently advertises herself as anti-AI and anti-ICE. I haven't read her other books but the covers are bangin yall.\ \ \ \ And Side by Side They Wander is an intergalactic art heist by a ragtag group of underqualified misfits. For three hundred years, humanity’s greatest works of art have been on loan at the Museum of the Seed-Born. It was finally time for them to come home…but the alien curators were disinclined to return them. So they're gonna steal them back.\ \ 03. Platform Decay by Martha Wells (Tor Books, May 5, 2026)\ \ In the 8th installment of Murderbot Diaries, SecUnit has volunteered for a rescue mission and will have to spend a significant time...with children. \ \ \ \ I personally cannot WAIT to watch the ensuing hilarity. And if you're a Gideon the Ninth fan and haven't picked this one up yet, it's one of the few that actually captures that sarcastically funny tone Muir is known for. I've picked up Martha Wells' older books looking for that tone and it's not there. But it is here, so if you haven't started this series yet pick it up!\ \ 04. The Subtle Art of Folding Space by John Chu (Tor Books, April 7, 2026)\ \ Yes, if you've noticed by now I'm indeed a Tor fangirl. I promise I'm not doing this on purpose, I researched hundreds of lists, make a new list of the books I found interesting, and lots were Tor. Someone over there has good taste in authors and books ok?!\ \ John Chu is a is a Taiwanese-American science fiction writer by night, microprocessor architect by day.\ \ \ \ The Subtle Art of Folding space is a multiverse sci-fi novel about a girl who must confront generational trauma in order to preserve the secret technology that is keeping her grandmother alive - without tearing the fabric of the universe. Apparently, her grandmother's dim sum can't solve every problem.\ \ 05. Hard Reset by Jonathan Yanez (Indie, April 11, 2026)\ \ Jonathan Yanez is an Indie Latin-X author, filmmaker and podcaster.\ \ \ \ Hard Reset is an apocalyptic LitRPG where a bounty hunter and a smartass computer program take on an authoritarian government. I haven't read a good LitRPG since Ready Player One (#2 was not great IMO - not because he used 75% of the book to discuss his politics, just that he didn't weave it in well enough to the story) and I'm ready for a new one!\ \ 06. The Demon Star by Jesse Aragon (Daw Books, July 2026)\ \ Jesse Aragon is a Hispanic American who grew up in Belgium.\ \ \ \ In this space opera fantasy mashup, Ysira was supposed to be a human sacrifice. But she survived. Now, partnered with an addict exorcist, she must battle her way through a demon haunted canyon, a starbound satellite, cultists, aliens, and the gods themselves to save her estranged son from becoming the vessel of a god-killing demon. It's weird and epic and complex and I think I'm gonna love it. Or hate it...either way will be a wild ride.\ \ 07. Love Galax y by Sierra Branham (Daw Books, May 5, 2026)\ \ Sierra Branham is a bisexual Alaskan with goats and cats and a skill for juggling knives on the gram. She says it's cringe. I'm into it.\ \ \ \ Love Galaxy is a sci-fi sapphic romantic thriller coined as "Andor meets the sapphic Bachelorette." Temmi is a young trash collector from a dead-end planet who gets cast on a reality TV show to compete against 24 other women for the hand of the prince, a quiet, bookish guy who loves science—or the princess, with whom her chemistry is undeniable. But not everyone is there for the right reasons…\ \ 08. Fist of Memory by Wole Talabi (Daw Books, Fall 2026)\ \ Wole Talabi is a Nigerian sci-fi writer, engineer, and editor.\ \ \ \ The only info I could find on this book is that it's a First Contact Thriller about a strange and non-communicative alien spacecraft and an assassin with a talent for lethality. That was enough to raise the excitement hairs on the back of my neck! When I read about this book I followed him on Tiktok and he followed me BACK! (This never will cease to shock and awe me - that these talented genius writers give a shit what I have to say. I AM NOT WORTHY!!!)\ \ 09. The Redemption Center is Closed on Sundays by Andrea Hairston (Tor, May 26, 2026)\ \ Andrea Hairston is an African-American science fiction and fantasy playwright, novelist, and scholar from Pittsburg. I read her recent book Archangels of Funk and I wasn't smart enough to fully get it, but I could tell it would be a five star read for some people!\ \ \ \ If the title The Redemption Center is Closed on Sundays isn't interesting enough to get you already, this book is an extra-dimensional murder mystery with conundrums, alien tricksters, and a dog detective who just doesn’t know the meaning of “stay”. I'm all for good dog stories but a naughty Berniedoode, a haunted house, and a ragtag bunch of crime solving misfits? I'm in like Flynn. \ \ 10. Ignore All Previous Instructions by Ada Hoffman (Tachyon Publications, May 12, 2026)\ \ Ada Hoffman is a genderfluid autistic immigrant poet and author of The Outside, a sci-fi thriller which I read last year and adored.\ \ \ \ Ignore All Previous Instructions is a queer sci-fi story about a script supervisor for an AI media company that controls which stories can be told. Kelli is also a space pirate who smuggles inappropriate stories. When her ex gets tangled up in the gender reassignment black market, she must risk her safe life for the world she once wished for.\ \ 11. A City Dreaming by Maurice Broaddus (Tor, June 30, 2026)\ \ Maurice Broaddus is an Afrofuturist author and community organizer.\ \ \ \ A City Dreaming is the third and final installment of the Astra Black series, which is a story of a space faring empire, the Muungano, who split away from the wars and oppression of Old Earth to form a utopia. But the old powers don't want them to thrive, and now they must fight back against plots to destroy everything they've built. \ \ This is a multi-POV Game of Thrones style series from an author who has written Black Panther comics. Sweep of Stars, the first book, is available in audio, so if you want to catch up before the last book comes out, now is the time!\ \ 12. The Disco at the End of the World by Nathan Tavares (Titan Books, June 2, 2026)\ \ Nathan Tavares was born and grew up in the Portuguese-American community surrounding Fall River Massachusetts, where his family immigrated from their native Portugal. He is the author of the queer-focused scifis novels A FRACTURED INFINITY and WELCOME TO FOREVER.\ \ \ \ The Disco at the End of the World is The Day the Earth Stood Still meets the director’s cut of Studio 54. A queer liberation meets alien first-contact story, set within the discos of an alternate 1970s Los Angeles. Have I told you I'm a simp for first contact stories? Well if not, duh my friend.\ \ 13. Ghost of the Neon God by T.R. Napper (Titan Books June 23, 2026)\ \ T.R. Napper is an Australian educator, cyberpunk author, stay at home dad, art therapist for disabled people, and blackbelt in Korean sword fighting. On social media he is an anti-AI activist.\ \ \ \ In Ghost of the Neon God, a petty crook steals the shoes of a Chinese dissident, an Earth-shattering technology falls into his hands, and he finds himself, for once, the hero of the story, taking a stand against the ruling class to keep the spark of human rebellion alive.\ \ 14. Jitterbug by Gareth T. Powell (Titan Books, March 3, 2026)\ \ Gareth T. Powell is an anti-AI anti-billionaire author from Bristol whom Anne Leckie calls "must-read."\ \ \ \ Jitterbug is a space opera with a crew of bounty hunters who find themselves ensnared in a political conspiracy on the very fringes of the devastated solar system after they rescue the sole survivor of a pirate attack. Meanwhile, something vast and ancient creeps towards them from the depths of space… did you get chills? I got chills.\ \ 15. Terms of Service by Ciel Pierlot (I'm cheating, this came out October 14th from Angry Robot and I came across it while researching next year's books and it looks SO GOOD!)\ \ Ciel Pierlot is a disaster bisexual, digital artist and a hardcore gaymer (ha ha) from the San Francisco Bay Area. She’s also a giant nerd and no, you cannot stop her from bragging about her lightsaber collection. (This is copied directly from her bio so you KNOW her writing is going to be chef's kiss)\ \ \ \ Terms of Service is an epic Fantasy Sci-Fi mashup about a woman who accidentally sells herself into servitude of the local alien ship to get her cousin out of trouble. She did not read the fine print, apparently.\ \ \ \ \ \ If you liked this list—or just enjoy supporting reader-powered publishing—consider subscribing. I may be in a bit of a slump right now, but let’s be honest: at some point my autistic brain is going to latch onto something with the intensity of a TikTok algorithm sniffing out your deepest emotional wound, and then I’ll produce an obscene amount of content in a 48-hour frenzy (in which I forget to eat sleep or pee) of hyperfixated brilliance. It’s not a matter of if. It’s WHEN.\ \ Get in now so you can say you were here before the content deluge hit.](https://tattooedbibliophile.binderybooks.com/item/2OYxBCKG0A33fbdCD8hM/)

15 Science Fiction Books I'm Excited For in 2026

15 books