Everything We Know About Murderbot Season 2—and More SFF Links 

Read an Excerpt from Cabaret in Flames by Hache Pueyo

Hache Pueyo, the author of But Not Too Bold, is back with a new novella! Cabaret in Flames is a dark romantic fantasy about vampires. In an alternate Brazil, Ariadne is a doctor at a clinic that treats Guls, flesh-craving creatures who have harmed her in the past. Ariadne inherited the clinic from Erik, who saved her from the streets as a child. Since then, he has disappeared, and Ariadne has had to work alone. Then a handsome Gul appears, claiming to be a friend of Erik’s and suggesting there was something nefarious about his disappearance. Ariadne must decide if she can trust him in order to find her mentor, while their investigation leads them to an infamous cabaret.

You can start reading it on Reactor now, and take a teeny peek below!

“Fireworks crackled outside when he appeared at her door.

The neighbors set them off during football matches and to show whether or not they agreed with the news, but the noise that night was louder, thundering above the buildings like lost bullets. The visitor introduced himself as Quaint, no surname, following the tradition of his kind. My sobriquet since the nineteenth century, he would later say, coined by my late wife.

In age, Quaint looked like he could be anywhere in that nebulous period of adult life that ranged from thirty to fifty, but it was more, much more.

“Hello, gul doctor,” he said through the speaker of the intercom. Only his lower jaw and a fragment of his black umbrella appeared on the screen. “It’s been a long time.”

Ariadne never allowed anyone in her house after curfew, let alone a man, but something in his words made her press the button that unlocked the front door. Perhaps it had been the certainty with which Quaint had spoken, hinting at an intimacy they did not share, or perhaps she was intrigued by the fact that he was a healthy adult male. Most of her patients were elderly, disabled, or pregnant, harmless save for a few exceptions, so his presence in the clinic sparked her curiosity, making her wonder what a mature gul could want with her.

After climbing the last step, Quaint stood in the stairwell, just the silhouette of a tall man in the penumbra. It was like seeing a panther lurking in the darkness, well-built and alluring, waiting until the prey would walk into the trap.”

Cabaret in Flames by Hache Pueyo is out March 10, 2026, from Tordotcom.

Here’s Everything Known About the Second Season of Murderbot

I was so delighted by the first season of Murderbot! I think they did a great job with the adaptation, and I was really excited when they announced it would get a second season. If you haven’t seen the first season, I highly recommend checking it out (and same for the books!)

If you’ve seen the first season and don’t mind light spoilers, TVOverMind has a recent post about what is up next for the Alexander Skarsgård-led Apple TV+ series about a self-aware security android. It also stars David Dastmalchian (who also has a wildly fascinating digital series, Grave Conversations, where he interviews people about death while they are lying in caskets) and Noma Dumezweni.

What is Happening?: An Interview with Mike Chen

We’re big fans of Mike Chen here at Book Riot, and Publishers Weekly has a new interview with him about his upcoming book, The Photonic Effect. It’s a space opera about a space captain and her crew caught in a galactic civil war.

“I wanted to use the setup to create a real-world mirror. As we can see in February of 2026, government responses to crises aren’t always the best. The way I thought about it was, if you had a group of people who were stranded on a desert island for 10 years, and they came back and found the state of the world as it is today, they would be like, What is happening? This doesn’t make any sense. That’s the vibe that I was going for, where this crew is trying to process their trauma of being stranded and they’re basically told to go into this war that they don’t feel is just. And trauma responses form differently for each person, which I tried to show with each of the main point-of-view characters.”

You can read the whole interview at Publishers Weekly. The Photonic Effect by Mike Chen is out April 21, 2026, from S&S/Saga Press.

Okay, star bits, now take the knowledge you have learned here today and use it for good, not evil. If you want to know more about books, I talk about books pretty much nonstop (when I’m not reading them), and you can hear me say lots of adjectives about them on the BR podcast All the Books! and on Bluesky and Instagram.

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