Genre Guide – Hopepunk

It’s not easy to come to terms with the mistakes we’ve made. For Ylfing, a young storyteller whose words hold great power, it’s even harder. Grappling with guilt and grief, Yfling must decide whether he wants to repeat his country’s tragic history, or change its path for the better.

A colonized planet experiencing temperature extremes of both heat and cold is home to a handful of livable cities. When Sophie, a shy university student, ends up on the wrong side of the law, she is exiled to the dark side of the planet, which usually means certain death.

Tess’s job is to time travel to key points in history and prevent a shadowy group of misogynists from eliminating women’s rights forever. Meanwhile, back in 1992, Beth and her friends are trying to hide a dead body. As the struggle for control of time travel ripples across the multiverse, Tess and Beth’s lives become intertwined.

Hopepunk is less of a new invention and more of a retroactive category to describe what many authors were already doing. Addison’s tale of an unlikely successor to a goblin empire appears frequently on lists of books considered hopepunk. Completely out of his depth, and without a single friend to help him, Maia must figure out how to rule wisely.

A motley spaceship crew accepts a dangerous assignment, and learns to think of themselves as a family…even prickly Rosemary, who has reasons to distance herself from her past.

It’s hard to stay on good terms with your neighbors when your dad is The Guy Who Ruined Everything. Adapted from one of Gay’s short stories, this comic tells the story of both father and son, demonstrating why certain choices were made, and what can be done in the aftermath.

Kenna, a young space traveler, has been searching for his life’s purpose, and not finding it. Then he meets Paulius, a restaurant owner who sees Kenna’s potential, and gives him a chance in the kitchen.

Two rival groups, the Agency and the Garden, are fighting a time war over whose vision of the universe should prevail. Red and Blue, agents on opposing sides of the time war, taunt each other with notes left behind as each undoes the work of the other.

In 2025 California, an eighteen-year-old African American woman, suffering from a hereditary trait that causes her to feel others’ pain as well as her own, flees northward from her small community and its desperate savages.

Maggie Hoskie is a Dinétah monster hunter, a supernaturally gifted killer. When a small town needs help finding a missing girl, Maggie is their last best hope. But what Maggie uncovers about the monster is much more terrifying than anything she could imagine.