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AudioBook information:
Author: Yoon Ha Lee
Narrated by: Greta Jung
Release date: October 27, 2026
Audiobook Duration: 11 h 9 min
Summary:Â Three-time Hugo Award finalist Yoon Ha Lee returns to science fiction with a swashbuckling space opera about fighting against an evil empire trying to erase history.
In the stars-spanning Censorate, languages other than the Republic’s own lingua rubra, which has reality-altering properties, are forbidden. Nevertheless, there are discrepancies. The Censorate’s star forces are called the Athenaeum Navy, and each of its ships is referred to as a codex. Instead of port and starboard, its soldiers refer to verso and recto. The unholy “stigmata” gouged into the ships’ hulls might, to a foreign scholar, bear a resemblance to verboten texts in other languages.
The Censorate is ruled by its Peacock, Aurelia, feared for the power of panopticon: she can look through anyone’s eyes. Moreover, Aurelia’s mastery of lingua rubra lets her force anyone who can understand her to follow her orders. Valentina, sold to Aurelia’s family as a child to be Aurelia’s oath-sister and companion, is its Swan, responsible for extracting useful information from foreign texts, then destroying them as well as entire languages through arcane arts. Valentina is assisted in her work by lower-ranking linguists and AI assistants who accept temporary contamination by foreign languages as a necessity of their work.
But this isn’t enough for Aurelia. She wants to control and deploy the Censorate’s thousand-year traitor and prisoner, the Basilisk, a man with a gaze so lethal that he destroyed its fleet of old through camera feeds. Unfortunately for her, the Basilisk gave himself a form of aphasia that makes him immune to her commands.
Reviews:
Lee’s spectacular return to space opera is a triumph – opulent, indulgent, and very, very sharp. I loved it — Emily Tesh, author of SOME DESPERATE GLORY
A science-fantasy that is bar none the Final Boss of language magic — Rebecca Roanhorse, Hugo Award-winning author of BLACK SUN
If you like linguistics or space opera or math, you’ll love Code and Codex! It’s like nothing else I’ve ever read — S. L. Huang, author of THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS
It’s a delight to witness a master of the craft luxuriating in language… Yoon gives us an empire where everyone is guilty, everyone is complicit, and yet every word is a potential transformation — Ursula Whitcher, Ursula K. Le Guin Prize-nominated author of NORTH CONTINENT RIBBON
Intricate and fascinating — Publishers Weekly
A dazzlingly immersive science-fantasy novel of linguistic domination that will keep hold of readers’ minds as surely as the Peacock beguiles her subjects — Library Journal, starred review
Imagine if Alan Moore wrote The Locked Tomb books and you might start to approach the insane word-drunk joys of Yoon Ha Lee’s latest — Literary Hub
PRAISE FOR THE AUTHOR
‘A densely rendered, high-tech future universe, with intricate worldbuilding— Guardian
Breathtakingly original space opera — New York Times
Full of the kind of off-hand inventiveness that the best SF trades in
Fiercely original and enchanting — Adrian Tchaikovsky
About the Author:
Yoon Ha Lee is a Korean American science fiction and fantasy writer who received a BA in math from Cornell University and an MA in math education from Stanford University, and is currently pursuing an MA in professional media composition from ThinkSpace. Yoon’s novel Ninefox Gambit won the Locus Award for best first novel, and was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke awards; its sequels, Raven Stratagem and Revenant Gun, were also Hugo finalists. His middle grade space opera Dragon Pearl won the Mythopoeic Award for Children’s Literature and the Locus Award for best YA novel and was a New York Times bestseller. Yoon’s short fiction has appeared in publications such as Tor, Clarkesworld Magazine, and Audubon magazine, as well as several year’s best anthologies.