The Red Scholar's wake - Aliette de Bodard

Shortlisted for the 2023 BSFA Award for Best Novel, shortlisted for the 2023 Arthur C. Clarke Award!

Xch Si: bot maker, data analyst, mother, scavenger. But those days are over now-her ship has just been captured by the Red Banner pirate fleet, famous for their double-dealing and cruelty. Xch Si expects to be tortured to death-only for the pirates' enigmatic leader, Rice Fish, to arrive with a different and shocking proposition: an arranged marriage between Xch Si and herself.

Rice Fish: sentient ship, leader of the infamous Red Banner pirate fleet, wife of the Red Scholar. Or at least, she was the latter before her wife died under suspicious circumstances. Now isolated and alone, Rice Fish wants Xch Si's help to find out who struck against them and why. Marrying Xch Si means Rice Fish can offer Xch Si protection, in exchange for Xch Si's technical fluency: a business arrangement with nothing more to it.

But as the investigation goes on, Rice Fish and Xch Si find themselves falling for each other. As the interstellar war against piracy intensifies and the five fleets start fighting each other, they will have to make a stand-and to decide what kind of future they have together...

An exciting space opera and a beautiful romance, from an exceptional SF author.