Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: If you like your science fiction deep, clever, and thematic, but still enjoy a good time while you read, you can’t go wrong with Sarena Ulibarri. Today she’s bringing us Steel Tree, a science fiction retelling of The Nutcracker. Sarena, can you tell us a bit about this wonderful book? 

Sarena: In the agricultural bread basket for humanity’s new colony, there wasn’t supposed to be any native animal life, but farmers have been going missing and rumors abound of something lurking in the shadows. At Klara Silber’s winter harvest party, the introduction of a new android nutcracker should have been the big news—but that’s before one of the guests transforms into a giant rat and goes on the attack.

Sabitha: What inspired you to write this book?

Sarena: One of my husband’s favorite Christmas traditions is to watch a production of The Nutcracker ballet. One year, I was particularly struck by the scene in which Drosselmeyer gifts two automatons to the Stahlbaum children. I wondered if anyone had reimagined The Nutcracker in a futuristic setting, with the “toys” being robots. When I couldn’t find anything even close to that, I knew I needed to write it.

Sabitha: I’m glad you did! Now that you’ve written it, if you could meet your characters, what would you say to them?

Sarena: What can an author ever say to their characters except, “I’m sorry I put you through that”?

Sabitha: How much research did you need to do for your book?

Sarena: Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet is based on a novella by Alexandre Dumas, which is itself a reimagining of a story by E.T.A. Hoffmann called “The Nutcracker and Mouse King”. I picked up a book that contained both versions, plus a lengthy intro with historical context, and read the whole thing twice. Like anything written by Hoffmann, it’s weird. 

I borrowed as much from the original as from the ballet, and I also researched a lot about the history of the ballet itself. Every name in the book is a reference—for example, the Pirlipat nut is named after Princess Pirlipat, who is cursed by the Mouse Queen to transform into an ugly doll, and Petipa Colony is named after Marius Petipa, the choreographer who first took this strange story and adapted it into a ballet.

Sabitha: Who did you imagine reading your book as you wrote it?

Sarena: I’ve always hoped this could be a book that people would gift to each other for the holidays—and it turned out to be a perfect stocking stuffer size. I wrote it for a general adult audience, but the Publishers Weekly review says, “the prose skews slightly toward younger readers,” which I suppose is true enough. If you’ve seen The Nutcracker a dozen times (whether because of love or obligation) and want to see it with fresh eyes, I hope you’ll enjoy Steel Tree.

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Sarena: These days I’m mostly on Mastodon or Bluesky, though I also have an Instagram account @sarenaulibarriauthor. You can find Steel Tree on Amazon or direct from Android Press.