Challenge: Books I Discovered On Social Media

This is part of the weekly Wednesday Blogging Challenge over at Long and Short Reviews. This week's topic is Books I Discovered On Social Media.

Which... I don't even know where to start. There's a bunch.

All right, let's start with the one I'm reading now:

1. The City Stained Red, by Sam Sykes. I wound up following Sam Sykes on Twitter a few years back, I think mainly because of his interactions with Chuck Wendig (whom I'd already read and enjoyed) and Myke Cole (whom I hadn't, yet). So... this book. All right. You know what High Fantasy is? Grand themes, great heroes, inescapable destinies, and the ultimate war between Good and Evil? Yeah. This book... isn't that. This is more... Low Fantasy. Yes, it has a lot of the fantasy tropes, but it's also got a lot of crude humor, heroes who aren't particularly heroic (they've actually arrived on the scene because they're chasing someone who owes them money), and despite all that it has a lot very enjoyable adventure.

2. The Iron Wyrm Affair by Lilith Saintcrow. An intriguing, richly-imagined mix of steampunk and sorcery, which I believe I originally learned about from an article on John Scalzi's blog Whatever. (I wouldn't absolutely swear to that, but I distinctly remember the article and its discussion of how the romance elements within the book play out, and it isn't between the two title characters.) Anyway, after I finished that one I read the next in the series, and the one after that, and somewhere in there I basically started working my way through all of Lilith Saintcrow's back catalogue.

3. Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente. Oh my God, y'all, I love this book so much. And I wouldn't have known it existed except that the author was talking about how it grew out of her deep, strong love of Eurovision -- either on Twitter, or somebody linked to the discussion from Twitter. This is a story about some deeply broken, very remarkable people who have to save humanity from extermination through the power of Rock'n'Roll.

4. Rolling in the Deep by Myra Grant. I'm pretty sure I picked this one up because somebody on Twitter said, "It has murder mermaids." I do not regret that choice. It's a bit campy (there's a bit of Found Footage approach to the way it's set up) but it does exactly what it sets out to do, and the end result is a fun little horror book set in the middle of the ocean. With mermaids.

5. Space Unicorn Blues by TJ Berry. This is another one that I can basically chalk up to, "I follow a lot of authors and aspiring authors on Twitter." I'm pretty sure that in this case somebody said, "Unicorns! In! Space!" and I thought, "I'm there for that." A misfit crew, an unlikely mission, a pretty fair amount of violence and explosions, and some actual personal growth in the characters. It's not going to be to everyone's taste (in fact, that's probably true of anything I like) but I enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to the sequel.

There are others, probably a lot of others, but those are the ones that come to mind off the top of my head.