I’m reading King of Shards (Book One of the Worldmender Trilogy), by Matthew Kressel, now. If this saga ends anywhere near as good as it has begun, I will have found my new favorite 21st century spec fic author. But, more on that later…
For now, I’ll leave you with a quote, from Mr. Kessel, about how the literature establishment looks down on speculative fiction:
“If you’re ignoring science fictional tropes, you’re ignoring reality. We have supercomputers in our pockets that connect to satellites. We have artificial intelligence that decides what we see every day. We have video conferences. NASA’s going to the moon again, and we have a probe on Mars—helicopters will fly on Mars in the next week or two. We’re living in a science fiction world, and if you ignore that, maybe you’re the one who’s the fantasist.”
https://www.matthewkressel.net/2021/04/02/podcast-ursula-k-le-guins-the-dispossessed/
–quoting his own appearance on a recent Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast