A science fantasy book for fans of Brandon Sanderson’s Yumi and the Nightmare Painter if it was a Studio Ghibli film.

THE ARCHEOLOGY OF FALLING WORLDS
by Megan Chee
(via Zeno Agency)

Starga is a vibrant, neon city built with magic and technology from athousand unreachable worlds. Existing in a weird splinter of reality where people from across the universe fall out of the sky with no memory of their past lives, it is a mystery even to its own citizens.

No-one knows why Starga exists or what lies beyond it. No-one has ever been able to leave. And with more people falling from the sky every year, Starga’s resources are at a breaking point.

Frey is a disillusioned office worker who once dreamed of being an archeologist—a scholar of fallen artefacts from the worlds above. When she gets the opportunity to salvage artefacts for a criminal organization, she knows it’s a dangerous idea. But she can’t resist the call of the unknown.

She explores the desert wasteland beyond the city walls in search of valuable artefacts. What she finds is a fuzzy black worm. Then the worm starts changing shape… and talking… and Frey’s life suddenly gets a lot more complicated. Because the worm is actually a shapeshifting dragon who knows the secret of what Starga really is—and how to escape from it. He just needs to get his memory back.

Megan Chee is a Singaporean author who has lived in Taiwan,Hong Kong, and the United States, and is currently based in Singapore. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, and other venues. Her work has been translated into Chinese in Science Fiction World, and has been featured in The Year’s Best Fantasy, Vol.3 (Pyr Books).