Our favorite books this year were so wonderfully human. A sexbot’s quest for self-determination; a haunted house inhabited by angry witches; more than one heartbreaking new take on time travel — genre fiction is always about how we live now, but this year how we live now seems so much closer to the surface.
With romantasy, Gothic horror, and retellings of classic myths, many of our picks this year bleed with wit and pain and good old-fashioned lusty passion, as the dread of the last few years gives way to a feeling of restlessness, a raw chrysalis awaiting what’s next. No one really knows, but we’re having a hell of a time reading these dazzling attempts to sort it all out.
So jump in and take your pick. Whichever direction you head in, we’re sure you’ll find a new book to love.
Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield was, hands-down, one of my favorite books of 2022, so it should come as no surprise that her new speculative novel, Private Rights, is a top contender for 2024. After all, what’s not to love about a dystopian, queer re-imagining of Shakespeare’s King Lear?
Set in a not-too-distant future, Private Rites tells the story of three estranged sisters, Isla, Irene, and Agnes, who are forced to return to their childhood home after their father’s death in order to sort through his possessions. The more time that they spend together in their father’s home, the more their respective lives begin to unravel. And to make matters infinitely worse, the world itself seems to be drowning beneath a never-ending torrent of rain. Rife with family dysfunction and literary horror, this is a novel, not unlike her first, that will burrow under your skin and live there. —Rachael Conrad
In a time when cozy mysteries and soft, heartwarming fantasy novels are all the rage, The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong is a sparkling step above the rest.
Tao is a fortune teller who travels between villages to divest “small fortunes” to anyone who might want one. These fortunes range from whether someone might kiss their crush to the weather, and are otherwise unremarkable and inconsequential. But when one of Tao’s small fortunes becomes something much larger, a thief and a former mercenary recruit her to track down a lost child. The result is a delightful tale of finding family and overcoming the darkness in one’s past to make way for the light in their future. —Rachael Conrad
It’s nerve wracking when one of your favorite series gets a spinoff. I’ve been disappointed before, and was relieved to find myself not reliving history with Heir. Picking up 20 years after Sabaa Tahir concluded her Ember quartet, Heir introduces readers to a trio of new protagonists whose stories are intertwined with Ember’s much beloved Laia, Elias, and Helene, but are more interesting enough to stand on their own. What really won me over, though, was the introduction of Kegar, an impoverished nation with a wholly new set of corrupt leaders and systems of class, religion, and magic. By expanding the story beyond the Martial Empire’s borders, Heir avoids feeling like a retread of worn ground, and opens up the duology to new perspectives that create complex new dilemmas and further complicate ones left lingering from A Sky Beyond the Storm. —Sadie Gennis
Longtime Naomi Novik fans and newbies may be divided over which aspect of this short-story collection is most interesting — the look back at the past, or the look forward to the future. Two of the longer pieces here are “Spinning Silver,” an earlier draft of what became Novik’s novel of the same name, and “The Long Way Round,” a story from (and teaser for) the world Novik is exploring in her upcoming novel Folly. The former is fascinating in part because so much of it is the same as the novel, until the radically different ending; the latter is fascinating for the tease it offers of work to come.
Mixed in among those are other stories fit to excite regular readers or lure new ones into Novik’s work: “Vici” is a story about a dragonrider, set in the era of the Roman Empire in the world of Novik’s Temeraire alt-fantasy novels; “Dragons & Decorum” is a spin on Pride & Prejudice set in the same world. “After Hours,” meanwhile, is a sequel story to Novik’s Scholomance books, giving a sense for what that world looks like after The Golden Enclaves wraps. This collection would be worth it for those returns to beloved worlds alone, but the rest of these stand-alone stories, exploring fantasy versions of different historical eras, each opens up its own enjoyably detailed and specific little world, places that feel both meticulously researched and immediately exciting. —Tasha Robinson
Perfect for fans of Mike Mignola’s beloved Hellboy series, Volume 1 of The Strange Tales of Oscar Zahn follows Oscar, a dapper and utterly charming floating skull, who just so happens to be the world’s greatest paranormal investigator, as he solves occult mysteries throughout time, space, and different realms altogether.
Not only is The Strange Tales of Oscar Zahn gorgeously illustrated — Vuong’s use of space, color, and the occasional image of an eldritch abomination is impressive to say the least — it is a clever meditation on loss and grief. And, while Oscar’s own origin remains a mystery to readers this time around, it’s clear that there is a bigger story afoot and that each case he solves will bring him closer to the truth. —Rachael Conrad
One thing that made Okorafor’s award-winning novel Who Fears Death so spectacular was its incredibly rich world-building. She Who Knows is the first book of a new trilogy set in that same Africanfuturist universe, which blends West African culture with speculative fiction, fantasy, and folklore.
The book follows teenage Najeeba, who becomes the first girl in her village to ever get the Call — a mystical pull to travel to the salt mines, a journey she undertakes alongside her father and brothers. Her decision to answer the Call sets Najeema on a trajectory that irrevocably transforms her, as she experiences levels of freedom outside her village’s gender and caste norms and discovers the depths of her own magical abilities — all explored through Okorafor’s intimate, impactful prose. It’s a short, but spellbinding read that left me wanting to return to Who Fears Death just to spend a little more time in this world. —Sadie Gennis
This standalone fantasy starts in an unbeatably intriguing moment, with the protagonist, 14-year-old Cordelia, paralyzed in church, unable to even shoo away a pesky fly. It rapidly emerges that her mother is a sorceress whose idea of parental discipline involves possessing Cordelia’s body for days on end. Evangeline is a ruthless woman with a bottomless appetite for wealth, status, and fancy things, but she’s also lazy enough that she and Cordelia live in a backwater hovel — until Evangeline decides it’s time to upgrade, by netting rich men for both her and her unwilling but thoroughly cowed daughter.
Kingfisher — the pen name of Ursula Vernon, who writes and illustrates middle-grade books under her own name — has several different modes as an author. Some of her adult novels (like The Twisted Ones or The Hollow Places) are pure horror, while others (like The Seventh Bride or Thornhedge) are fresh spins on familiar fairy tales. Her fantasy novels in the mode of A Sorceress Comes to Call are a third thing: original visions that make her feel like the clear successor to Diana Wynne Jones. Sorceress has some of the feel of what made Jones such a beloved author: a touch of manic humor, a touch of prosaic practicality about magic that makes it simultaneously frightening and almost mundane, a villain who’s both monstrous and a little pathetic. And especially, a set of characters who are endearing, sometimes frustrating, and drawn in ways that turn a few telling details into a clear, compelling portrait.
Here, in laying out the household of aging gentry and practical servants that Evangeline disrupts with her schemes, Vernon builds instant rapport with a large cast of characters and sets up a lot of surprises. It’s a light, enjoyable novel and a quick read, but also an incredibly endearing one. —Tasha Robinson
I think it’s safe to say that only an author as brilliant as M.T. Anderson could pull off writing a book that can easily be billed to readers as a Monty Python taking on the Bible by way of a Steven Soderbergh heist that also happens to be (very loosely) based on a true story. Nicked is utterly bizarre, at times laugh-out-loud funny, and full of mayhem.
In the year 1087 a plague swept through the Italian city of Bari, ravaging it. Desperate for a cure, those in charge turn to a monk by the name of Brother Nicephorus, who claims to have been visited by Saint Nicholas — yes, that one — in a dream. It soon falls to Nicephorus and a charismatic, and morally questionable, treasure hunter to track down and steal Saint Nicholas’ bones in a bid to cure the disease. But what begins as a quest to save the city becomes infinitely more complicated as they close in on their goal. —Rachael Conrad
Love or hate Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy, The Bright Sword is a completely different animal — a ginormous Arthurian saga (688 pages in hardback!) that delves equally into mythmaking and myth-deflating. A young knight, Collum, makes his way to Camelot with heady dreams of serving King Arthur at the Round Table, only to discover that Arthur and most of his legendary knights are dead. He doesn’t know he’s arrived right at the point where most of the Arthurian sagas end, but Grossman does, and he uses the spaces Arthur left behind to explore the humanity of the few surviving knights, and the last quest left to them.
The story, jumping back and forth in time, partially follows a pattern familiar from George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones and the sequels: Grossman digs into the unsentimental, grim-and-gritty side of the fantasy-medieval setting, and jumps between perspectives to build a both an epic kingdom-sized story and a lot of small personal ones. But he brings magic into the story far more than Martin — this is still the world of witches, the wizard Merlin, and the Green Knight, where there’s little to no line between preternatural and supernatural skills. Collum makes for a naïve but enjoyable protagonist as he tries to figure out what he wants among the despairing, angry knights left in Camelot’s wake, and whether any of his dreams are still achievable. It’s a sprawling story, but a surprisingly gripping and thrilling one. —Tasha Robinson
If you’re a fantasy reader, a fan of incredible world building, and somehow haven’t stumbled across Christopher Buehlman’s Blacktongue series, then you’re seriously missing out.
It’s important to keep in mind when diving into The Daughter’s War that it is a prequel, and not a direct sequel, to The Blacktongue Thief. Set some years before the events of the first novel in the series, The Daughters’ War is set in a world that has been torn asunder by goblins. All of the horses are dead, and Galva, Kinch’s raven-riding future companion, is at war. The book chronicles Galva’s time with the legendary Raven Knights, the death of her beloved brothers, and the journey that eventually leads her to a young queen and a quick witted thief. —Rachael Conrad
The frustrating experience of being stuck in a time loop has prompted stories in practically every major medium: comedy movies, action movies, horror movies, television, board games, video games, you name it. At this point, stories that start with the protagonist first discovering they’re caught in a loop may feel like they’re wasting space on events we’ve all seen many times before. But that frees creators to play with ideas like the one at the center of Django Wexler’s violent, grim, yet surprisingly cozy fantasy How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying, which launches with the protagonist being tortured to death in a dungeon for at least the hundredth time.
Davi accidentally came from a mundane world to a magical one, isekai-style. She was declared the Chosen One. She joined the forces of humanity against the beast-people and orcs of the wild, and the Dark Lord leading them. Eventually, she failed to save the world and died. And then she woke up again, at the beginning of her loop, as if she’d just lost in a video game — one where she could feel pain as well as despair. After hundreds of agonizing iterations of the same doomed fight, she’s exhausted, furious, and borderline psychotic, so she figures, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” And she sets out to join the bad guys and take over the world, using her time-loop resets to build knowledge she can use to gain the allies and minions any dark overlord needs.
There’s a nervy, madness-driven dark humor to all of this, which makes Davi a pretty hilarious protagonist with a surprising dark side. She doesn’t take life or death seriously anymore, but she does value whatever pleasure she can get. All of that leaves her jaded, profane, self-indulgent, hedonistic, smug, and reckless. But as she gets to know the orcs and “wilders” she’s been slaughtering in her hundreds of past lives, her perspective starts to shift. This is openly a series launch rather than a stand-alone — it ends on a fairly massive cliffhanger — but it’s a zippy, surprising, grabby ride of a book that makes the prospect of more to come feel like a warm promise. —Tasha Robinson
As a writer, Leigh Bardugo has an appealing chameleonic quality: The YA fantasy of the Shadow and Bone series, the Gothic modern university fantasy books The Ninth House and Hell Bent, and the elegantly repurposed fairy-tale stories of The Language of Thorns are all enjoyably different from each other in voice and direction. But her historical fantasy novel The Familiar is in a class by itself.
Set in 16th-century Spain, with the Inquisition looming large over the culture, The Familiar starts with a servant, Luzia, doing petty little household miracles to make her work easier. When her bored, resentful employer catches her at it, their interactions set off a series of religious and political intrigues that attract and enmesh people from radically different social classes, with radically different agendas — and in some cases, radically different magics. It’s gloriously rich and tangled, the rare court intrigue novel that fully lives up to its potential. And the way Bardugo blurs the line between types of magic — and leaves some questions unanswered — makes for fascinating worldbuilding that lines up with the historical setting. —Tasha Robinson
John Wiswell’s debut novel (after a long series of intriguing short stories, well worth looking into online) reads a bit like a fantasy spin on Martha Wells’ Murderbot books, if the main character was a powerful protoplasmic goo-monster in a medieval-ish society instead of a cyborg in space. It’s a sort of cozy asexual romance, where the point-of-view character, a human-devouring creature named Shesheshen, makes meaningful contact with a monster-hunter and starts learning about the human experience, besides the basics of being anxious, aggressive, and tasty.
Shesheshen’s slow awakening about the lies and misapprehensions she grew up with makes for warm, emotional, satisfying reading. And the way she navigates her tentative relationship with the monster-hunter, who accepts Shesheshen’s human facade as reality and doesn’t realize she’s a monster, builds sympathy and hope for this unlikely couple’s future. The conflict here is largely on the human side, in ways that also make Someone to Build a Nest In a story about surviving and recovering from familial abuse and manipulation. It’s a nurturing, satisfying found-family story where half of the found family has a whole lot more tentacles and internal pockets of sloshing acid than in other books in this subgenre. —Tasha Robinson
I’m obsessed with describing this book to people in person because it’s so much fun watching their expression when I say: It’s about anthropomorphic insects who live on floating islands in the sky — except these islands are actually million-year-old living tentacle creatures that are the only thing between the warring insect kingdoms living on their backs and the deadly firestorm below. Some of the insects have magic powers that were given to them by gods — except these abilities are so harmfully addictive that they’re now viewed as curses, and anyone with magic is immediately outcast from the insects’ rigidly hierarchical society. It’s a hat on a hat on a hat on a hat, yet this Bartholomew Cubbins-esque plot not only works, but works really well. The Storm Beneath the World is as gripping and emotionally grounded as it is innovative and weird. The book also includes illustrations throughout, which I found extremely helpful in visualizing Fletcher’s unique creatures and further immersing myself in this one-of-a-kind world. —Sadie Gennis
The Woods All Black is a short but powerful read about identity, prejudice, revenge… and monster sex. After serving in WWI, trans frontier nurse Leslie is assigned to a remote Appalachian town, where his attempts to administer vaccines are immediately rebuffed by the hostile religious citizens. Already in danger just by being there, Leslie puts himself at further risk by trying to help a young trans boy who’s being pushed into an unwanted marriage.
Mandelo grounds the story in historical realities and the dangers of zealotry, which provide the novella with plenty of horrors before the monster lurking in the woods is even introduced. The Woods All Black is violent, erotic, and fueled by rage in all the best ways. And while the paranormal elements don’t take center stage until the very end, they’re more than memorable enough to make an impact. —Sadie Gennis
Before I started Annie Bot, I guessed it would either be a didactic, derivative DNF or an instant favorite. Given its place on this list, I think the answer’s clear.
Annie is a top-of-the-line sex robot devoted to being the perfect girlfriend to divorcé Doug. He prides himself on being a benevolent owner and praises how human she seems, but as Annie begins to develop true sentience, he grows increasingly frustrated and controlling. Annie struggles to reconcile her guilt and pain over displeasing Doug with her own wants and needs — feelings she’s discovering for the first time. Greer does an incredible job allowing Annie’s journey for self-fulfillment to live alongside her enduring desire to please Doug, even as he becomes more abusive. This push-pull is uncomfortable, heartbreaking, empathetic, and tense — and it’s precisely what makes it all so human. —Sadie Gennis
This sequel to Hannah Kaner’s 2023 novel Godkiller has an advantage over the first book in the series, in that it doesn’t have to introduce an entire world, explain what gods are in this setting and why there’s a whole subclass of people dedicated to killing them, and then build an emotionally fulfilling narrative within that framework. Instead, it just brings back the same characters to face an escalated threat. That makes it less surprising and less of a voyage of discovery than Godkiller, but the stakes feel higher and Kaner has more room to dig into the details of this world.
Sunbringer raises two major threats at the same time: a cult devoted to resurrecting and empowering a vicious fallen god, and a king who’s out to become a god himself. This time around, the main characters have more space to stretch and grow, as they all learn more about what they’re capable of and what it means to accept change, especially in themselves. All of which makes Sunbringer a thornier and more complicated book than Godkiller, but also a richer one. —Tasha Robinson
Danielle L. Jensen is one of the top romantasy authors out there, and after reading A Fate Inked in Blood, I understand why. The book packs in a lot of intricate world-building, delivering you to a Norse mythology-inspired universe where those who possess a drop of god’s blood are gifted with echoes of their abilities.
For years, power-hungry men have searched for the Hlin-blessed shield maiden who is prophesied to unite Skaland under the one who controls her fate. Because of this, the headstrong Freya kept her powers a secret all her life, even going along with her family’s wishes to become a wife rather than pursue her dreams of battlefield glory. When her Hlin blood abilities are unintentionally exposed, Freya finds herself forcibly oathbound to an ambitious jarl and thrust into a dangerous political game that tests her cunning, strength, and how much she’s willing to sacrifice for (what she’s told) is the greater good. There is, of course, also a spicy forbidden romance between Freya and the jarl’s brooding, tattooed son, but what really hooked me into A Fate Inked in Blood was the tightly wound plot, compelling character development, and engaging mythology. It’s a great first foray into romantasy, even if you’ve never had a strong interest in the genre before. —Sadie Gennis
This one’s a quick read, a novella-length fantasy that reads startlingly like the reader is being dropped into a sequel without having ever read the original book. Given where it begins — with soldiers pounding on the door of Veris, the protagonist, and hauling her before a murderous ruler known only as The Tyrant — the less you know about this one going in, the better, because there’s so much to discover moment to moment as the story unfolds. It’s enough to say that it involves lost children and a forest full of horrors — the stuff of Grimm’s fairy tales, presented in lyrical language with a breathless what’s-coming-next tone. Piecing together the story that came before this story is almost as much fun as reading this one. —Tasha Robinson
Those looking for a fun time-travel adventure, be warned: The Other Valley is not a barn burner. Instead, it’s a wistful novel of quiet devastation and philosophical uncertainties that will give you a bad case of heartache. It’s also one of the most stunningly original takes on time travel I’ve ever read.
Sixteen-year-old Odile lives in a valley town where if one were to walk east, they’d arrive at the same town 20 years in the future. Walking west, they’d find the same town 20 years in the past. This pattern repeats itself across infinite towns in both directions, with trips between the valleys rigorously governed by Conseils, local officials who evaluate citizens’ requests — like a parent’s wish to see a child who has since passed. So when Odile accidentally sees the parents of a classmate visit from the east to secretly observe their son, she knows something terrible must be about to happen to him. Torn between the strict rules against interference and her desire to save the boy she’s begun to fall for, Odile finds herself questioning the world around her in ways that might change not only the future of her classmate, but of their entire society.
It’s a refreshingly unique approach to a well-trodden genre, elevated further by Howard’s elegant prose. And while the pacing is slow, Odile is such a wonderfully drawn protagonist that I relished the opportunity to experience her journey moment to moment. So if you love to sink into a story’s atmosphere and the minutiae of a character’s interior world — or are wondering what a mix between Emily St. John Mandel and The Giver would read like — you’ll find few rivals to this memorable debut. —Sadie Gennis
There’s the slightest tinge of Narnia in this stunningly rich novel, which begins with four young people stumbling back into a high school classroom in their small coastal Massachusetts town after being elsewhere, in a realm they can barely remember or describe. There’s the slightest tinge of Neil Gaiman’s America Gods in what follows, as the powers they’ve accidentally invoked begin setting claims on them, and using them as pawns in a war they don’t understand.
The rest is pure Kelly Link — one of modern fantasy’s most consistently engaging short story writers makes her novel debut with this hefty novel, which splinters into a dozen different stories as she shifts between points of view, exploring the four escapees, their captor, their savior, their families, and others in the small town around them as she slowly unpacks the mystery of what happened to them and what it means. —Tasha Robinson
Sapphic Gothic vampire dark academia. These are not just AO3 tags, but also a description of S.T. Gibson’s An Education in Malice.
A decadently lush Carmilla retelling, it follows two young women at a remote college whose lives become consumed by their desires for validation and for each other. Gibson skillfully fleshes out the complicated relationship between the rivals-turned-lovers Laura and Carmilla and their exacting poetry professor De Lafontaine, a vampire whose obsession with Carmilla ensnares the trio in a high-stakes web of wanting and withholding. While I’m not always the biggest fan of retellings (I’m not talking about you, Madeline Miller), between An Education in Malice and the Dracula reimagining A Dowry of Blood, Gibson has left me thirsting for more of her new takes on vampire classics. —Sadie Gennis
Fans of Kij Johnson’s The Fox Woman and similar tales about kitsune and like-minded folkloric tricksters shouldn’t miss Yangsze Choo’s The Fox Wife — but it reads equally well for fans of Netflix’s animated series Blue Eye Samurai, given its revenge journey, its strong personalities and points of view, and its narrative split between complementary characters chasing down different goals. The fox of the title is Ah San, or Snow, who shifts between human and animal forms at will. She lives in the hinterlands of 1908 Manchuria — until a hunter’s selfish act kills the child she’s raising on her own, and she starts hunting the killer in turn.
Meanwhile, the aging detective Bao, who has a supernatural gift for detecting lies, takes on a case to identify a woman found frozen in the snow under mysterious circumstances that suggest a fox’s involvement. Choo skips back and forth between Bao’s past and present and Snow’s quest as their paths cross, and as the reasons behind Bao’s lifelong fascination with the folklore around foxes become clear.
This is a complicated narrative, a historical fantasy packed with characters and connections, which makes the journey here particularly rich — the kind of narrative that hooks readers in with hope, as Choo teases the possibility of specific information coming to light, or specific characters’ paths crossing. It’s absorbing and beautifully told, particularly in the characters’ distinctive and different voices, which help build out a unique world where magic seems minimal, but woven seamlessly into the setting. —Tasha Robinson
Source：https://www.polygon.com/2024/7/8/24180933/best-fantasy-books-sci-fi-2024
