Benjanun Sriduangkaew Books In Order

Publication Order of The Cognate Coefficient Books

Publication Order of Her Pitiless Command Books

Publication Order of Machine Mandate Books

Publication Order of Scale-Bright Books

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Benjanun Sriduangkaew
Benjanun Sriduangkaew is a Thai writer that likes odd cities and beautiful bugs. She writes fantasy, science fiction, and others in between. For those looking for cute kissing ladies, as well as ruthless genocidal commanders.

Benjanun’s debut novella “Scale-Bright” was shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association award, was a 2014 finalist for Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

“Scale-Bright” is the first stand alone novella and was released in the year 2014. Julienne’s aunts are the archer that shot down the suns and the woman that lives on the moon. They teach her about how there is more to the city of her birth than meets the eye; how beneath the modern glass and chrome of Hong Kong, there’s gods, demons, and the seethe of some ancient feuds. Being a mortal, Julienne is required to just give them a wide berth, for unlike her divine aunts she’s painfully vulnerable, and is choice prey for any demon.

Until this one day, when she comes upon a wounded and bleeding woman that nobody else is able to see, and gets drawn into an old, old tale of snake women, love, and the deathless monk that hunts them.

Benjanun is quite possibly the most exciting new voice in speculative fiction today and is edgy, lyrical, and startling. She’s is a true original, not to mention a magician with the words. As she uses language to evoke everything from a festival meal’s texture, to the despair and violence of Houyi fighting against some demon, from the feelings of being resurrected from the dead, on to a goddess watching the rise of modern cities.

“Winterglass” is the first novel in the “Her Pitiless Command” series and was released in the year 2017. One woman’s love for her homeland (Sirapirat) and her determination to defeat the Winter Queen who’s overtaken the land.

The city-state Sirapirat knew monsoon and warmth once. When the Winter Queen conquered it, she remade the entire land in her own image, and turned Sirapirat into a country of unending frost and snow. However an empire is not her one and only goal. In secret, she looks for the fragments of this mirror whose powers will grant her deepest desire.

By her right hand is General Lussadh, who bears one such shard of the mirror in her heart, being as loyal to winter as she is plagued by her past as a traitor to her country. Tasked with tracking down other glass-bearers, she finds one in Nuawa, who is an insurgent that has forged herself into a weapon that will strike the queen down.

Nuawa, in order to earn her place in the queen’s army, is forced to enter a lethal tournament where the losers’ souls are given away in service to winter. In order to free Sirapirat, she’s ready to make sacrifices: those that she loves, herself, and the complex that is slowly forming between herself and Lussadh. Should the splinter of glass in Nuawa’s heart not succeed in destroying her first.

“And Shall Machines Surrender” is the first novel in the “Machine Mandate” series and was released in the year 2019. On the dyson sphere Shenzhen, humans live in luxury and artificial intelligences rule, vying to be selected as host bodies (called haruspices) for the next generation of AI, and thus be worshiped as gods.

Dr. Orfea Leung has come here to escape from her past of mercenary violence. Krissana Khongtip has arrived to reinvent herself from haunted spy and into a holy cyborg. However the utopian peace of Shenzhen is destroyed when the haruspices start committing suicide, and the pair are called on to solve this mystery, and survive the silent war being waged between machines.

“Now Will Machines Hollow the Beast” is the second novel in the “Machine Mandate” series and was released in the year 2020. Vishnu’s Leviathan: a half-machine, half-beast warship that is famed for its might and speed. The great prize which armies across the galaxies will kill in order to possess.

Admiral Anoushka was a ghost once. Now she is the universe’s most brutal commander with a debt owed to some godlike AI. In order to repay it, and complete her long revenge, she has set her sights on the leviathan. Neither the warship’s flesh horrors nor its ruthless ruler are going to stand in her way.

However all of her plans could not prepare her for what waits in the belly of the beast: a foe which matches her in ferocity and her thirst for vengeance, and a deep treachery which might prove to be her undoing.

This is an engaging story and a fantastic sequel that is lavishly queer and sometimes sexy just like you would expect from this author. Benjanun delivers a sweet and moving novel, with each one of the characters being lovable.

“Shall Machines Divide the Earth” is the third novel in the “Machine Mandate” series and was released in the year 2021. On a graveyard star, machines run this lethal tournament and draw humans like moths to a flame with this priceless promise. Partner up with an artificial intelligence and battle it out to the death. Win and receive your heart’s desire.

Thannarat, a war veteran, has sought this hidden world in order to realize just a single goal: bringing back the dead. In order fulfill this wish, she joins this game alongside a seductive AI that pledges to give her a victory. The tournament is filled with these deadly secrets, and so is the AI which professes to be her weapon. But to have what she really needs, Thannarat is going to sacrifice everything. The woman she once loved, her home world, and herself.

All she’s got to do is defy the game’s inescapable rule: that in the end, the only real winners are the machines.

This novella has some ravishingly beautiful world building, a disturbingly cruel but hopeful narrative of destruction and desire in the borderland between machine and human sentience. Benjanun always writes with such passion, wit, eloquence, and skill and is a true delight for readers to absorb, read, and digest.