Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard (A Fire Born of Exile) is an exciting space opera filled with rivalries and fraught politics, and featuring well-drawn characters. The novel's world combines the supernatural powers of xianxia-style combat and a sci-fi setting; navigators use their powers to fight and to guide ships through the Hollows, a kind of subspace that enables faster-than-light travel. The dangers of the Hollows are multiplied by the deadly presence of inter-dimensional jellyfish called tanglers. When a tangler escapes from the Hollows, a navigator is assigned to work with a ragtag collection of juniors from other clans to locate it.
Việt Nhi is a capable but junior navigator of the Rooster clan. Not only does she struggle to get along with the other clans, she has trouble understanding and communicating with people in general, often finding them too "unpredictable" and "messy." One of these is the volatile assassin Hạc Cúc, who is trying to live up to the impossible standard set by her wise and talented mentor. She constantly sees herself as not good enough, which sets her on a path to miscommunication and strife that threatens everything she wants. On the other hand, when Hạc Cúc softens slightly and shares some of her vulnerabilities, Nhi is terrified that she'll say the wrong thing and destroy the romance developing between them.
The novel's sapphic romance is sweet and satisfyingly spicy, and the found-family dynamic that develops is as cozy as the many cups of tea brewed throughout the story. De Bodard has written a fast-paced read full of tenderness and delightful sci-fi monsters. --Carol Caley, writer