News & Announcements

Recent and forthcoming books

Code and Codex edits handed in! US release (Saga Press) October 27, 2026; UK release (Solaris Books) February 25, 2027.

Wanted y’all to hear it from me: CROWNWORLD (book 3 of the Moonstorm trilogy) is canceled. I will not be completing the book (the trilogy). I’m very sorry to readers who were hoping for the conclusion.

This was a mutually agreed, amicable decision between the primary/US publisher (Delacorte), the UK publisher (Rebellion Publishing – Solaris Books), and myself.

Between sales and publishing realities (MOONSTORM sold poorly and its prospects are unlikely to improve for political reasons you can guess), this was a rare situation where this benefits both publishers and myself. I could not announce the cancellation earlier for legal/contract reasons, and can’t “simply” release the partial draft of CROWNWORLD for same.

I didn’t plan on MOONSTORM being a market failure. But novel-writing is a career with baked-in instability and career risk. I knew that going in.

Abbreviated version of what happened on my end: I have 66,000 words of a near-finished draft that I don’t plan on resuming. The breaking point was when I had a concussion in March 2025.

You might ask why I don’t “just” yeet the last 10,000 words to have a book for release to readers even if the print publishers are no longer interested in publishing it. After illness and family crises, I’m exhausted. More than one person close to me nearly died; I set writing aside for months to do caretaking. I have peripheral neuropathy (among other things); my hands and feet might recover, or they might get worse and curtail my ability to do the things that bring me joy.

Both my publishers extended incredible grace and kindness to me during this period. This is not on them. The trilogy existence failure is on me.

I’m moving on. I’ve spent the past several years writing about three books every two years (or 1.5 books per year – releases won’t line up because of production/publishing variables). This probably sounds slow/leisurely but was not sustainable with my health as unstable as it is. There would have been a breaking point down the line even if it hadn’t happened with this specific book. I’m going to spend some time on endeavors just for the joy of it.

I hope y’all have many books you’re looking forward to reading, by other writers.

Note: I’m not in financial distress at present. Please don’t worry on that account.

Best,
YHL
Feburary 5, 2026

For anyone who’s had difficulty picking up print copies of Machineries of Empire (Ninefox Gambit et alia), I’ve renewed the contract with Solaris Books so a new print version should become available (currently scheduled for 11 August 2026). More information when I have it.

my endeavors!

I’m deuceofgears on ThingsBook.

Music reel: Hybrid Orchestra & Other Explosions

– Bandcamp
– illustration
– Candle Arc: big space battles, small atrocities (2D animated short in preproduction)
– Linktree

Latest book

Starstrike

Delacorte Press (August 12, 2025)

As a clanner child on the world of Carnelian, Hwa Young had navigated by means other than the stars: familiar trees and boulders, land formations and the give of the ground underfoot, a subtle awareness of characteristic smells and air currents. How the clanners navigated in space, where there was a paucity of trees and boulders and land formations, she didn’t know. But the clanner fleet that she and her lancer squad had defected to, they knew the way. That had to be enough, she thought as they flew toward their current objective—­New Joseon’s Jasper Research Station, located on the largest outpost moon of the world Jasper.

This mission—­this one mattered more than usual.

If the intel she’d retrieved from her friend Geum proved reliable, and if they extracted a critical codebase on lancer-­pilot neural interfaces from Jasper Research Station, Commander Aera—­ Hwa Young’s long-­lost heart-­mother—­might finally allow her to enact her plan to retrieve Geum. Her best friend, a skilled technician, was stuck on the Imperial flagship, where they’d been forced to leave zir behind when Hwa Young and her lancer squad turned against the Empire—­a memory that still crushed Hwa Young. Even worse was the fact that Geum remained imprisoned after helping Hwa Young escape.


Forthcoming book

Code & Codex

Saga Press (October 27, 2026)
Three-time Hugo Award finalist Yoon Ha Lee returns to science fiction with a swashbuckling space opera fighting against an evil empire trying to erase history with reality-altering linguistics magic.

Forthcoming short story

Cutting Corners

Reactor Magazine (March 18, 2026)
In other Hausser bases, newly reassigned personnel must have been staring at their own ships, suppressing their qualms about the idea that a human might pilot them.