Oh, the wonderful struggle to choose the best books of the year! So difficult, so much fun! But I did eventually wrestle a list together – 24 books long, this year; shorter than both 2024 (29 books) and 2023 (25). But what they lack in quantity, they make up for in quality!
These are only the best of the 2025 releases – I have another list coming of the best backlist SFF I read this year, which will be up live in the next few days, probably tomorrow.
And now, may I present – in publication order, because I am not capable of ranking them in order of best-ness – THE TOTALLY DEFINITIVE BEST FANTASY AND SCI-FI BOOKS OF 2025!
Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Nonbinary sapphic MC, major sapphic character, secondary sapphic character, secondary nonbinary character/s
Published on: 1st January 2025
Goodreads
The Fisherman can't fathom why anyone would want to be human. Small wonder. They've been ripped from their underwater home under Europa's ice, and stripped of their skin--the nebulous outer layer that enables them to shapeshift for survival. Imprisoned on a ship that's hunting for a mad undersea god, they must help the crew find it if they want to retrieve their skin and return home. Dame Isobel, an insane young heiress, owns the ship, desperate to find the god in the hopes that it will heal her lobotomized girlfriend. The Fisherman is stuck in a female human form. They're pulled into a toxic, codependent sexual relationship with Dame Isobel-- in a world where homosexuality is punishable by death. In the midst of this insanity, it's quite clear to the Fisherman: Humanity is confusing, inefficient, and messy.
When Isobel reveals that she will never let the Fisherman go, even if they find the mad god, the Fisherman knows:
It's time to get violent.
I called this ‘fucked-up sapphic space-selkies’ AND I STAND BY THAT! What if you stole a selkie’s skin, but selkies could fuck you up??? With lots and LOTS of violence – a lot of queer wrath specifically? It has all the fun of a revenge fantasy, but there’s actually so much more going on – the story sets itself up to appear like one thing, but there’s two or three other layers beneath the surface and they’re all MAGNIFICENT!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, High Fantasy
Representation: Chinese-inspired setting and cast
Published on: 13th January 2025
Goodreads
Drawing on Chinese and Mongolian elements, award-winning poet Mary Soon Lee has penned an epic tale of politics, intrigue, and dragons perfect for fans of Game of Thrones and Beowulf.
As the fourth-born prince of Meqing, Xau was never supposed to be king. But when his three older brothers are all deemed unfit to rule and eaten by a dragon, as is the custom, Xau suddenly finds himself on the Meqinese throne. The early years of his reign are marred by brutal earthquakes and floods, and the long-simmering tension with the neighbouring country of Innis finally erupts into war. Worst of all, demons rise out of legend to walk the realm again, leaving death and destruction in their wake. In a desperate gamble, Xau must broker an uneasy peace with his former enemies and hope their combined strength is enough to vanquish the demons before it's too late.
The Sign of the Dragon is comprised of over 300 individual poems, including the Rhysling-winning "Interregnum." The first 60 poems appeared in the 2015 Dark Renaissance Books publication Crowned, which won the 2016 Elgin Award, and many individual poems have appeared in award-winning literary magazines such as Fantasy & Science Fiction, Spillway, and Strange Horizons. Collected together in its entirety for the very first time, with over 200 never-before-published poems, readers can finally enjoy King Xau's story of sacrifice and war and dragons from beginning to end.
You could argue that Sign of the Dragon shouldn’t be here – it was first published back in 2020, which you could argue means it belongs on my Best Backlist instead of new releases – but it was republished this year, and also this is my list and I do what I want. I’m counting it!
I shouldn’t be trusted to judge poetry, but judged as a novel, Sign of the Dragon is sublime. It manages to be both very epic and very humble in scope, showing us sweeping wars but also the travails of the palace cat. It anchors its big, cinematic plot-arcs with intimate human moments between wonderful characters – and it gets major points from me for featuring a magical ability I’ve never seen before!
Genres: Adult, Speculative Fiction
Published on: 27th February 2025
Goodreads
21st Century London.
The Norman conquest never happened.
The ancient tribes of Britain remain undefeated.
But murders still have to be solved.The small, mostly unimportant, island of Britain is inhabited by an uneasy alliance of tribes – the dominant Saxon East, the beleaguered Celtic West, and an independent Nordic Scotland – and tensions are increasing by the second. Supermarket warpaint sales are at an all- time high, mead abuse shortens the lives of thousands, and social media is abuzz with conspiracy theories suggesting the High Table’s putting GPS trackers in the honeycakes.
Amid this febrile atmosphere, the capital is set to play host to the Unification Summit, which aims to join together the various tribes into one ‘united kingdom’. But when a Celtic diplomat is found brutally murdered, his body nailed to an ancient oak, the fragile peace is threatened. Captain Aedith Mercia, daughter of a powerful Saxon leader, must join forces with Celtic Tribal Detective Inspector Drustan to solve the murder – and stop political unrest spilling onto the streets.
But is this an isolated incident? Or are Aedith and Drustan facing a serial killer with a decades-old grudge? To find out, they must delve into their own murky pasts and tackle forces that go deeper than they ever could have imagined.
Set in a world that’s far from our own and yet captivatingly familiar, Pagans is “The Bridge” meets “Vikings”, exploring contemporary themes of religious conflict, nationalism, prejudice... and the delicate internal politics of the office coffee round. Gripping and darkly funny, Pagans keeps you guessing until the very end.
I am deeply scandalised that this has flown so far under the radar…even if I understand how difficult it must be to pitch ‘gritty crime Saxon alt-history novel’! Henry’s prose is compulsively readable and I swooned for the worldbuilding here – and I ended up completely obsessed with the plot even though I couldn’t care less about crime fiction!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer MC, F/NB
Published on: 4th March 2025
Goodreads
Follow the river Liss to the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, and meet two sisters who cannot be separated, even in death.
“Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.”
In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.
But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters’ bond but also their lives will be at risk…
If you didn’t realise that The River Has Roots was written to cater to me specifically, then you must be new here. I’ve been following El-Mohtar’s mythmaking since her (exquisite) book The Honey Month, and The River Has Roots exceeded my wildest hopes! The prose is pure magic, I adored the take on Faerie and the faerie love interest, the magic and worldbuilding were beautiful, and the sisters and their relationship being the heart of the story, rather than any romance? MAGNIFIQUE!
Genres: Adult, Horror
Representation: Native American MC
Published on: 18th March 2025
Goodreads
A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.
A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.
If you’ve seen this one being talked about…yes, it really IS as brutally brilliant as everyone says. It’s dark and vicious and full of grief and rage, and does the wonderful thing of making you question who the fuck the actual monster is (if there is, in fact, only one). There’s layers to the horror, and layers to the story; it’s both a serial killer mystery and an up close and personal view of genocide; a vampire tale and a revenge quest; a tragedy, in so many ways. The vampire lore is fantastic, deeply creepy and gross and properly nightmarish (I may never sleep again after the whole how you kill a vampire thing), and a magnificent metaphor for white people entering and feeding on North America and the people who live/d there. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is every bit as horrifying as it should be, and it’ll rip your heart out over and over, so, you know – brace for that.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, High Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer autistic MC with ADHD, F/M/M polyamory
Published on: 25th March 2025
Goodreads
Fantasy | Romance | LGBTQ+
The spare becomes the heir and, on his path to the throne, discovers magical intrigue, a secret society pulling political strings, and not one, but two loves of his life.
I cannot tell you how much sheer JOY this book brought me! It’s so much FUN, especially if, like me, you’re craving nuerodivergent rep! Beau is an autistic prince with ADHD, and is very much a disaster as crown-heir – which he becomes after his older brother dies. The polyamorous romance is delicious, but what really impressed me was how neatly all the smaller plots fit together, and how incredibly different both love interests are to how they first appear to us (and to Beau), the skill with which McPherson reveals their true selves to the reader. It has all the sparkly fizzy EEE feeling of all the best romances, and though this instalment was fairly low-magic until near the end, it’s pretty clear we’ll be getting much more magic in the next book, and I can’t WAIT!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
Representation: Brown gay MC, M/M
Published on: 25th March 2025
Goodreads
Set in an alternate version of the British Isles where South Asian imperial interest colonized much of the globe thanks to their advanced technology, Professor Laxman Yadav is dating Saviour, one of the world’s most famous superheroes, while also investigating possibly the most important archeological find of all time. Equal parts pulp caper and meta-textual academic text, this novella leans as heavily on footnotes as it does on explorations of queer romance.
This is such a BONKERS book to try and describe! It’s – okay: what if, instead of the British Empire, a ton of the world was instead colonised by a fictional South Asian empire? And also superheroes existed??? And our protagonist is an extremely gay professor, dating one of the world’s biggest superheroes and also in on one of the biggest archaeological discoveries ever? AND ALSO THERE’S FOOTNOTES! It is even more fun than it sounds, and I adored this setting and all the characters so much!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
Representation: Brown cast, QBIPOC MC, queernorm world, minor nonbinary characters
Published on: 8th April 2025
Goodreads
An unforgettable tale of revenge and rebellion unfolds when an inexperienced king implements a doomed plan to end a thousand-year war in this relentlessly gripping epic fantasy debut from a “master storyteller” (Andrea Stewart, author of The Bone Shard Daughter).
“The exhilarating must-read fantasy debut of 2025.” —Tasha Suri, author of The Jasmine Throne
A SONG OF REBELLION. A SONG OF WAR. A SONG OF LEGENDS LOST.
In the Nine Lands, only those of noble blood can summon the spirits of their ancestors to fight in battle. But when Temi, a commoner from the slums, accidentally invokes a powerful spirit, she finds it could hold the key to ending a centuries-long war.
But not everything that can be invoked is an ancestor. And some of the spirits that can be drawn from the ancestral realm are more dangerous than anyone can imagine.
Drawing on multiple pre-colonial cultures, including Yoruba and Filipino, and set in a non-Western-inspired world, A Song of Legends Lost is not just a tale of vengeance but a stunning debut novel of identity and heritage.
“A whirlwind debut of ferocious talent and compulsive storytelling that lifts you up from the first page and never lets go.” —Lavie Tidhar, World Fantasy Award–winning author
This book is done such a disservice by its blurb – it sounds like something we’ve seen a thousand times before, but friends, A Song of Legends Lost is ANYTHING BUT! Ayinde is so genre-savvy, and spends the entire book manipulating the expectations experienced SFF-readers are going to go in with IN THE BEST POSSIBLE WAY! Nothing goes as expected, every time you’re certain you’ve worked something out the tables are flipped on you, every reveal is more jaw-dropping than the last! The way the different mysteries and secrets fit together and lead into the next – the INCREDIBLE cast of characters (Temi is only one of PoVs) – the worldbuilding!!! I have been SHRIEKING for the sequel since I turned the final page and my only consolation was to go and read it for a second time this year!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Epic Fantasy
Representation: Brown MC, bisexual PoV character, secondary brown sapphic character, queernorm world
Published on: 15th April 2025
Goodreads
From an electrifying new voice in epic fantasy comes The Raven Scholar, a masterfully woven and playfully inventive tale of imperial intrigue, cutthroat competition, and one scholar’s quest to uncover the truth.
Let us fly now to the empire of Orrun, where after twenty-four years of peace, Bersun the Brusque must end his reign. In the dizzying heat of mid-summer, seven contenders compete to replace him. They are exceptional warriors, thinkers, strategists—the best of the best.
Then one of them is murdered. We know who did it. We saw it happen. No one else did.
It falls to Neema Kraa, the emperor’s brilliant, idiosyncratic High Scholar, to find the killer before the trials end. To do so, she must untangle a web of deadly secrets that stretches back generations, all while competing against six warriors with their own dark histories and fierce ambitions. Neema believes she is alone. But we are here to help; all she has to do is let us in.
If she succeeds, she will win the throne. If she fails, death awaits her. But we won’t let that happen.
We are the Raven, and we are magnificent.
The Raven Scholar is another book that pretends to be one thing, but is in fact something else entirely – what looks like a murder-mystery ends up having far more at stake. It spirals out from its beginning into something so much bigger, so much more complicated, so totally unexpected. I loved it for how often it completely took me aback, for the number and excellence of the twists, for the incredible layers to every single character. And I was really surprised by how much I ended up loving the worldbuilding; dividing society into factions named after animals sounds like a very bad YA dystopia, but Hodgson built a system that fits together beautifully, one that I actually didn’t have any trouble believing in.
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi, Speculative Fiction
Representation: Trans MCs, M/M
Published on: 15th April 2025
Goodreads
Notes from a Regicide is a heartbreaking story of trans self-discovery with a rich relatability and a science-fictional twist from award-winning author Isaac Fellman.
When your parents die, you find out who they really were.
Griffon Keming’s second parents saved him from his abusive family. They taught him how to be trans, paid for his transition, and tried to love him as best they could. But Griffon’s new parents had troubles of their own – both were deeply scarred by the lives they lived before Griffon, the struggles they faced to become themselves, and the failed revolution that drove them from their homeland. When they died, they left an unfillable hole in his heart.
Griffon’s best clue to his parents’ lives is in his father’s journal, written from a jail cell while he awaited execution. Stained with blood, grief, and tears, these pages struggle to contain the love story of two artists on fire. With the journal in hand, Griffon hopes to pin down his relationship to these wonderful and strange people for whom time always seemed to be running out.
In Notes from a Regicide, a trans family saga set in a far-off, familiar future, Isaac Fellman goes beyond the concept of found family to examine how deeply we can be healed and hurt by those we choose to love.
I’ve been calling this post-apocalyptic literary fiction when I’ve been enticing other people to read it, and I still think that’s not a bad descriptor. Much of the book seems like it could be set in another world, as though this might be a no-magic Fantasy, but every now and then Fellman casually drops a detail that’ll break your brain with the realisation of where and when this story is taking place. It’s EPIC, and that’s before getting into the story itself, which is raw as an exposed nerve, as powerful as it is poignant. The character-work is incredible, as is the frank depiction of being trans, of different ways of being trans. It’s a fascinating tale of intrigue and art and revolution, and it’s also a profoundly vital found-family story, all of it written in the addictively silky prose that is Fellman’s signature. MAGNIFIQUE.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, High Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Brown pansexual MC, secondary queerplatonic F/F, secondary F/M/F polyamory, minor nonbinary character, queernorm world
Published on: 22nd April 2025
Goodreads
Lanie Stones is the necromancer that Death has been praying for.
Heartbroken, exiled from her homeland as a traitor, Lanie Stones would rather take refuge in good books and delicate pastries than hunt a deathless abomination, but that is the duty she has chosen.
The abomination in question happens to be her own great-grandfather, the powerful necromancer Irradiant Stones. Grandpa Rad has escaped from his prison and stolen a body, and is heading to the icy country of Skakhmat where he died, to finish the genocide he started. Fortunately for her, Lanie has her powerful death magic, including the power to sing the restless dead to their eternal slumber; and she has her new family by her side.
Grandpa Rad may have finally met his match.
CSE Cooney hit it out of the PARK with this wonderful sequel to Saint Death’s Daughter – wildly different from, but just as fizzingly fantastic as the first book! This series is hedonistic when it comes to FUN, is just bursting with delight and weirdness and over-the-top-ness; every chance Cooney has to GO BIG rather than going home, she takes, and the result is so incredibly joy-full – even when it also tears my heart out. Everything I loved about Daughter is abundantly present in Herald, not least the hopepunk philosophy, the insistence that only someone who loves life can truly master death-magic, and that heroes can’t get anywhere without some seriously amazing friends backing them. In fact, Herald is very much a rejection of traditional heroic arcs, which pairs well with a dismayingly smart and effective villain (DAMN HIM). Lanie remains one of my favourite protagonists of all time, and no one can possibly wonder how she’s so beloved of Saint Death. THE ONLY MYSTERY IS HOW ANYONE CAN NOT-LOVE HER ENOUGH TO STAND AGAINST HER. If I had to pick one word to describe Herald, it would be fireworksical generous; this book gives everything it has unstinting, is overflowing in its every aspect. Nothing is skimped on, nothing feels parsimonious, it is so abundantly itself that it can’t not fill your heart up, too.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bisexual MC F/F
Published on: 13th May 2025
Goodreads
Naomi Novik's Scholomance series meets Plain Bad Heroines in this sapphic dark academia fantasy by instant national and international bestselling author Emily Tesh, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.
"Look at you, eating magic like you're one of us."
Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood Academy and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings, and securing the school's boundaries from demonic incursions.
Walden is good at her job―no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. And it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from―is herself.
Magic school from the POV of a teacher! My favourite Tesh book yet by a country mile; the behind-the-scenes look at how a school is run was absolutely fascinating, so much so that I felt like I was getting away with something, like I was back at school spying on the teachers. Woven into almost every aspect of that is, you know, THE MAGIC, and I still giggle every time I remember the demon in the printer. It’s whiplash-smart and tongue-in-cheek hilarious, while also managing to be incisive on things like privilege and generational wealth and academia in general, and it has one of my favourite takes on demons EVER. (Give me all the properly-alien non-humans, please and thank you!) My Owlcrate edition is one of my prized possessions, let’s put it that way!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, High Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Brown bisexual MC, F/F, secondary sapphic character, minor nonbinary character, queernorm setting
Published on: 17th June 2025
Goodreads
A talented heretic must decide between the pursuit of forbidden magic, or the ecstasy of forbidden love—either way, her choice will upend the world, in the start of a sweeping, romantic epic fantasy trilogy by New York Times bestselling author Tessa Gratton.
Can an empire trip and fall on a mere strand of silk?
Iriset is a prodigy and an outlaw. The daughter of a powerful criminal, she dons her alter ego Silk to create magical disguises for those in her father’s organization, but she longs to do more with her talent: to enhance what it means to be human by giving people wings, night-sight, and other abilities; to unlock the possibilities of gender and parenthood; to cure disease and even to end mortality itself.
Everything changes when her father is captured and sentenced to death. To save him, Iriset must infiltrate the palace and the empire’s fanatical ruling family. There, she realizes she has a chance—and an obligation—to bring down the entire corrupt system. She'll have to entangle herself in the lives of the emperor and his sister, getting them to trust and even to love her. But love is a two-way street, and Iriset’s own heart holds the most mysterious and impenetrable magic of all.
This book. THIS BOOK. Good gods, this book is everything I have ever wanted out of Fantasy as a genre: extravagant in its worldbuilding, with magnificent magic, equal parts gorgeous and horrifying, queer as fuck, merciless, packed full of a cast you love to hate all revolving around a(n-anti?) heroine who could not care less what you think of her. Mercy Makers is decadent in every possible way, not least in its strangeness, how far-away and different its setting feels from anything familiar to the reader. Gratton’s approach to sex and sexuality feels genuinely groundbreaking, and what they accomplish with the writing – the use of perfectly-placed details and surgical control of tenses – had me so excited. This is a book you can read straightforwardly (even if nothing about it is straight), or you can take a magnifying glass to every word, and either way you a guaranteed an amazing time. This one is MANDATORY reading, friends!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Published on: 30th June 2025
Goodreads
Colin Levesque is at loose ends. He's finished university, but has no career; he adores romance novels, but he's crap at relationships; and his prickliness is a detriment at the café where he's making ends meet. He also has a crush on his regular Dav, a homo draconis who comes in every morning to read his newspaper, sip his double-strong coffee, and stare longingly at Colin in return.
So it figures that the day Colin gets up the courage to do something about the sexual tension simmering between them, he also learns that Dav has an embarrassing habit of hiccupping fire when he's nervous. Which, in this case, destroys the fancy custom-made bean roaster. When Dav volunteers to take over the coffee roasting with his fire-breath, being squished together in the hot, cramped kitchen leads to even hotter kisses.
Everything's finally happening for Colin—until people start claiming the dragon-roasted coffee has cured their genetic ailments. As their budding relationship struggles under the scrutiny of scientists and media, the hype around the coffee leads the lovers to be inducted into a centuries-old conspiracy: dragon-roasted food has always healed humans. And the most powerful draconic nobles have been withholding this symbiotic advantage to keep themselves on top. Colin and Dav are determined to expose the truth, but if they're not careful, their objections could goad power-mad monarchs into destroying everything they hold dear.
Including each other.
Even knowing that Frey always takes me by surprise… WOW I was not expecting where this went! Which was such fun; there were so many twists and reveals, and none of them felt forced or graituitous, just the natural result of delving deeper and deeper into an extensively thought-out fantasy world. I love the directions this took, how much bigger and more complicated the story became than a cross-species romance between two people (though I loved that aspect too!); capitalist conspiracies, monarchial politics, environmentalism, even the Landback Movement! Ultimately, though, I’m putting it on this list because it made me stunningly, intensely happy, and what is that if not a sign of an incredibly excellent book?
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: Brown cast
Published on: 5th August 2025
Goodreads
Susanna Clarke's Piranesi meets Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler in this stunning meta fantasy about the power of stories, belief and sisterhood
Myung and her sister Laleh are the sole inhabitants of the whale of babel—until Myung flees, beginning an adventure that will spin her through dreams, memories, and mythsAsk for the story of the mad sisters of Esi, and you’ll get a thousand contradictory folktales. Superstitious sailors, curious children, and obsessed academics have argued over the particulars for generations. They have wondered about the mad sisters’ two greatest marvels: the museum of collective memory that sprawls underneath our universe, waiting for any who call for it, and the living, impossible, whale of babel.
Myung and her sister Laleh are the sole inhabitants of the whale of babel. They roam within its cosmic chambers, speak folktales of themselves, and pray to their creator, the Great Wisa. For Laleh, this is everything. For Myung, it is not enough.
When Myung flees the whale, she stumbles into a new universe full of people, shapeshifting islands, and argumentative ghosts. In her search for Great Wisa and her longing for her sister Laleh, Myung sets off on an adventure that will unravel the mystery that has confounded everyone for centuries: the truth about the mad sisters of Esi.
Fables, dreams and myths come together in a masterful work of fantasy full of wonder and awe, that asks: in the devastating chaos of the world, where all is in flux, and the truth is ever-changing, what will you choose to hold on to? And what stories will you choose to tell?
The Indian release of Mad Sisters made my favourite backlist books last year, and DAMN RIGHT it’s making the Best of Year now it’s been published in the US! This is an utterly gorgeous, phantasmagorical books, and I can guarantee you’ve never read anything like it: a cosmic whale swimming through space, with infinite worlds inside it; an island that transforms in response to thoughts; museums accessible from anywhere so long as you touch your ear the right way…the comparison to Piranesi is very apt, is what I’m saying here! Mad Sisters has a very similar feel, even if it looks very different. Sisterhood, family, friendship, belonging and strangeness, the need to wander versus the need to build a home…it’s all here, waiting for you within the whale!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Black sapphic MC, nonbinary love interest, sapphic East Asian-coded love interest, F/NB/F polyamory, queernorm world
Published on: 16th August 2025
Goodreads
A Tired Blade
The Knife has long been the Warrior Guild's invisible answer to complicated problems—silent, sharp, and gone before her enemies even notice. She loves the work, loves helping people no one else will, but the years of endless travel—of lonely assignments, empty beds, and temporary allies—have worn her thin. Every new mission feels heavier, and Southport's nostalgic foods and familiar heat stir a deeper ache: the yearning not just for a solid home, but for a shared life with someone to whom she's just Kia, not the Knife...A Collision Course
Chasing down a string of kidnappings, the Knife crosses paths—and blades—with two surprising Southport natives, both hunting for missing family. Masako wields nature magic with steely fury, but knows almost nothing about Southport's criminal underbelly. Nukunya carries an encyclopedic knowledge of the city along with a dry wit that cuts as deep as any blade. After a violent first meeting the trio form an uneasy alliance, then a true team as their search leads them closer to their quarry… and each other…A Branching Path
Pinned down and hiding out in a brothel's back room, the Knife finds the lines between partnership, friendship, and romance blurring. Southport—and the people in it—has started to feel dangerously like home, but the Knife's Guild assignments never let her stay anywhere for long. With duty pulling her to one path and the temptation of Masako and Nukunya pulling her to another, she'll have to decide: Is it time to walk away again, or finally lay down roots?
Her Subtle Investigations is a standalone featuring the best of the secondary characters from the earlier Warriors’ Guild books (meaning you can dive into this one without reading the others, if you so wish). I love the earlier books, and expected to love this one – but I didn’t expect to love it more, and I VERY MUCH DO! The Knife is such a fabulous protagonist, smart and practical and freaking funny, and the way Investigations centered the kind of people society tends to ignore or devalue – sex workers, the homeless, immigrants, ACCOUNTANTS – gave the story a kind of… unexpected realism? Without being gritty or bleak. The same unexpected realism applies to the romance too: I was so delighted with the characters behaving like grown-ups, with the frank communication around people’s skills and feelings and sexual preferences. And it was all just so much FUN, really well-written, clever fun that succeeded so well at being what it set out to be. All the points!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Trans MC, lesbian MC, F/NB, F/F
Published on: 19th August 2025
Goodreads
In the vein of Alice Hoffman and Charlie Jane Anders's own All the Birds in the Sky comes a novel full of love, disaster, and magic.
A young witch teaches her mother how to do magic--with very unexpected results--in this relatable, resonant novel about family, identity, and the power of love.
Jamie is basically your average New England academic in-training--she has a strong queer relationship, an esoteric dissertation proposal, and inherited generational trauma. But she has one extraordinary secret: she's also a powerful witch.
Serena, Jamie's mother, has been hiding from the world in an old one-room schoolhouse for several years, grieving the death of her wife and the simultaneous explosion in her professional life. All she has left are memories.
Jamie’s busy digging into a three-hundred-year-old magical book, but she still finds time to teach Serena to cast spells and help her come out of her shell. But Jamie doesn't know the whole story of what happened to her mom years ago, and those secrets are leading Serena down a destructive path.
Now it's up to this grad student and literature nerd to understand the secrets behind this mysterious novel from 1749, unearth a long-buried scandal hinted therein, and learn the true nature of magic, before her mother ruins both of their lives.
What a beautiful book! This one filled my heart to BURSTING: it’s so warm, so hilarious, so earnest, and unflinching with it. If we had the eyes to see passion as light, Lessons In Magic and Disaster would be radiant – for crying out loud, the love one protagonist felt for her thesis subject was so convincing that I ended up obsessed with it too! (And was more than a little heartbroken that The Book does not, alas, exist!) Anders uses the magic so well; it’s a quieter, subtler magic than in most of the books on this list, but that really doesn’t make it any less powerful – it certainly took me apart and put me back together, more than once. This is another joy-full book, and specifically it’s full of queer joy; Anders called it her queerest book yet, and a) yes b) YES.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Epic Fantasy
Representation: East Asian-inspired setting and cast
Published on: 1st September 2025
Goodreads
Long ago, Vích took her younger brother and fled the mysterious but terrible fate their mother intended for them both.
Bound together by her curse and his gift, neither Vích nor Lahn have ever needed to fear any of the ordinary dangers that beset mortal people. But they have never been safe from those who would use them both in pursuit of power beyond life and death.
Now those enemies have found them.
The world will never be the same.
Neumeier has always rocked at worldbuilding, but Eight Doors From Dawn to Midnight feels very much as though she took all her favourite things at once, and put them all into the same book. The result is breathtaking, absolutely enchanting; my copy is covered in highlights, all the unbearably beautiful images and moments that I couldn’t get enough of. And the story is more than capable of holding up so much wonder; what starts out with a tiny, idiotic error spirals out until it’s the fate of every world at stake, these two marvellous protagonists – Vích, a Deeply Unimpressed not-heroine with a terrible monster to manage, and her brother Lahn, trickster-y with easy access to (almost) every world there is – swept up in something even bigger than they are. (And they’re pretty big, mighty, all by themselves.) The human realm of the story is somewhat inspired by East Asia, but watch for the colour of the sky and how many souls people have; and every other world is an extravagant fantasy, indulgent in the very best of ways, alien and beautiful and painful, because I could not, alas, actually go visit them. When I say this is my favourite Neumeier book yet, that is a HIGH bar, and yet – this is my favourite Neumeier book yet.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: Major nonbinary character, secondary sapphic character
Published on: 16th September 2025
Goodreads
In this stellar debut fantasy, a trickster Fox god challenges an underachieving acolyte to save herself by saving her own ancestors. But are Nesi and her new friends from the past prepared to defeat the ferocious Wolfhounds of Zemin?
“If you love my worlds, you're going to love Cahill’ stunning imagination, daring premises, and deep character dives. A new author to watch.”—N. K. Jemisin, author of the Broken Earth series
[STARRED REVIEW] “A marvelous and heartbreaking tale.”
—Library JournalNesi is desperate to earn the patronage of one of the Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven. As a child with godly blood in her, if she cannot earn a divine chaperone, she will never be allowed to leave her temple home. But with ninety-six failed auditions and few options left, Nesi makes a risky prayer to T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks.
In folk tales, the Fox is a lovable prankster. But despite their humor and charm, T’sidaan, and their audition, is no joke. They throw Nesi back in time three hundred years, when her homeland is occupied by the brutal Wolfhounds of Zemin.
Now, Nesi must learn a trickster’s guile to snatch a fortress from the disgraced and exiled 100th The Wolf of the Hunt.
Oh Audition, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways! Maybe more than any other book on this list, Audition gave me solace this year; its fiercely hopepunk core kept me warm when things outside were fucking bleak. It’s about a form of resistance to fascism that doesn’t get spoken about often, namely comedy, and the result was a galaxy-brain read for me. But my nerdy self also fell head-over-heels for the incredible worldbuilding, all the tiny details and the myths of the Fox god that separate the different parts of the book. It makes for a wonderfully sumptuous story, a world that feels so real you could step through and visit it – even if I’d rather not end up in the time period poor Nesi spends most of the book in! And the Fox is my favourite kind of trickster; give Audition a try, and the Fox’ll steal your heart before you can say ’99 Pillars’!
My review!
My interview with Martin Cahill!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bi/pansexual MC, chronically ill MC, MLM MC, major trans-or-SOMETHING character
Published on: 14th October 2025
Goodreads
'An intriguing work of whimsi-grotesquerie'
OLIVIE BLAKEHe was sent to kill a pest. Instead, he found a monster.
Enter the decadent, deadly city of Tiliard, carved into the stump of an ancient tree. In its canopy, the pampered elite warp minds with toxic perfume; in its roots, gangs of exterminators hunt a colossal worm with an appetite for beauty.
In a complex, chaotic city, Guy Moulène has a simple keep his sister out of debt. For her sake, he'll take on any job, no matter how vile.
As an exterminator, Guy hunts the uncanny pests that crawl up from the river. These vermin are all strange, and often dangerous. His latest quarry is a worm the size of a dragon with a deadly venom and a ravenous taste for artwork. As it digests Tiliard from the sewers to the opera houses, its toxin reshapes the future of the city. No sane person would hunt it, if they had the choice.
Guy doesn't have a choice.
'A lush and seductive story, rife with opulent horror and decaying decadence'
SUNYI DEAN
I called this ‘queer rococo bugpunk’ and I stand by every word! Works of Vermin is a gloriously hypnotic, hallucinatory Weird Fantasy (or Dark Fantasy? Or Horror? Or – I still can’t decide what genre this is AND I LOVE THAT SO MUCH) that will shapeshift into something else every time you try to pin it down. Lavishly strange and lovingly body-horror-y, this is even more of a masterpiece than Leech was (and Leech was a freaking masterpiece). There’s opera and chemical warfare and politics as art (no, LITERALLY), jewels and warping bodies and PLOT-RELEVANT EMBROIDERY. It’s about burning the fucking world down for the people you love. It’s baroque and feral and the kind of venomous that will have you swooning through fever-dreams for a week. And I mean that as an IMMENSE compliment!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Genderqueer MC, bisexual genderqueer MC
Published on: 28th October 2025
Goodreads
From Alix E. Harrow, the New York Times bestselling author of Starling House, comes a moving and genre-defying quest about the lady-knight whose legend built a nation, and the cowardly historian sent back through time to make sure she plays her part–even if it breaks his heart.
Sir Una Everlasting was Dominion’s greatest hero: the orphaned girl who became a knight, who died for queen and country. Her legend lives on in songs and stories, in children’s books and recruiting posters―but her life as it truly happened has been forgotten.
Centuries later, Owen Mallory―failed soldier, struggling scholar―falls in love with the tale of Una Everlasting. Her story takes him to war, to the archives―and then into the past itself. Una and Owen are tangled together in time, bound to retell the same story over and over again, no matter what it costs.
But that story always ends the same way. If they want to rewrite Una’s legend―if they want to tell a different story--they’ll have to rewrite history itself.
Some books are so beautiful they hurt: this is one of them. Every sentence will slice you to ribbons, but you’ll love every second of it. I don’t understand how Harrow consistently writes novels that break me into little pieces so lovingly, but she does, and she has very much done it again with Everlasting. Speaking as someone who has zero interest in time-travel fiction, this is time-travel done and utilised so incredibly perfectly; as a love story, as a way of rewriting history, as an object lesson in the power of stories. It’s an examination of who writes history down and why, and how much we can ever trust even first-hand accounts; it’s about fascism and power and the poison of patriotism, the easy weaponisation of it; it’s about war and who pays the price for it; it’s about love, it’s about love, it’s about love, and I do not mean only romance. (Though the romance is superb.) I’m sure tattoo artists around the world have already been inundated with customers who want lines of this book permanently marked on them. It would only be an outward expression of how every word of it is already engraved on our hearts.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer MC, F/NB, secondary sapphic character, secondary nonbinary character; gay MC, major brown character
Published on: 30th October 2025
Goodreads
Two novellas in one book
The Sheltering Flame by Ruthanna Emrys
Three old friends fleeing from their lives in academia take on a unique restoration project in the hills of New England, only to find that the stewardship of their crumbling new property comes with a magical obligation. When a desperate teenager turns up on their doorstep claiming sanctuary, it brings them into direct conflict with an ancient power of the land – one who rules over its debtors without mercy. The Hearth’s new keepers have 24 hours to save their new friend, fulfill their unexpected obligations, and claim the future they didn’t know they wanted.
Walking a Wounded Land by Andrew Knighton
Ghosts linger amid the fields and streets of England, waiting to be summoned by those who can walk their paths. Paul is one of the walkers, returned home to follow in a friend's last footsteps and learn how he died. But the land is a place of conflict, caught between connection and control. To find peace, Paul will have to confront his own past and other people's power, in a poignant tale of grief, justice, and walking your own path.
Wiz Duos is a series of paired novellas from Wizard’s Tower Press; this third entry in the series is made up of one novella from the inestimable Ruthanna Emrys, and a new-to-me author, Andrew Knighton. (Though be sure that, after this book, I will be looking up the rest of what he’s written!) And the thing is – the thing is, it’s not just that each of the novellas, alone, are exquisite; that they’re each the kind of poignant, meaningful, that squeezes the breath from your lungs and makes your heart ache and ache. Though they are. But pairing them together makes something greater than the sum of its parts, makes the kind of art you’d expect to see at the Louvre, were it visual. (What’s the Louvre of the literary world? Shelf this book there!) Together, they’re about magic and activism, big-picture vs small-picture, about the ways we can help each other and the ways we should. They’re both about home, as a concept, and as a concept within magic specifically; about connections, to other people and to where we live, where we belong (not always the same). And they’re both really clever, full of outside-the-box thinking, outside-the-box ways of looking at things. Side-by-side, they…well, they blow my mind, let’s put it that way.
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Queer MC, nonbinary love interest, major nonbinary characters, queernorm setting
Published on: 18th November 2025
Goodreads
From one of the most original and dazzling voices in speculative fiction comes an intergalactic tale of conspiracy, war and the fall of empires.
My name is Mawukana na-Vdnaze, and I am a very poor copy of myself.
In telling my story, there are certain things I should perhaps lie about. I should make myself a hero. Pretend I was not used by strangers and gods, did not leave people behind.
Here is one out there in deep-space, in the pilot's chair, I died. And then, I was reborn. I became something not quite human, something that could speak to the infinite dark. And I vowed to become the scourge of the world that wronged me.
This is the story of the supernova event that burned planets and felled civilizations. This is also the story of the many lives I've lived since I died for the first time.
Are you listening?
Discover this thrilling and breathtakingly imaginative space opera from the multi-award-winning Claire North, perfect for fans of Ann Leckie, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Arkady Martine.
Slow Gods is another book I really needed this year: among all the other things it has going on, it’s fundamentally a story about deciding that if you can’t find meaning in this big, beautiful, cold universe, in all the terrible things that happen, all the terrible people who do terrible things…you’ll make it. It’s about making meaning, deciding that if nothing matters we’ll make it matter, and the philosophy of it, the reasoning behind it, had me both galaxy-braining and ugly-sobbing. (In a good way, to be clear!) Slow Gods is a hopepunk manifesto against despair, against horror, and more importantly it’s a really fucking convincing one; but it’s also an amazing story, following a functionally-immortal man as human space readies for, then lives through, then deals with the fallout of, an enormous natural disaster. North’s worldbuilding is once again superb; every planet, every people, every culture is so wildly unique and fascinating (albeit sometimes fascinating in the way of a trainwreck, and yes Shine I’m talking about you), and all of them feel so powerfully, convincingly real. Maw’s story is almost impossibly vivid, as though North is injecting the emotions straight into your veins; I defy you not to have your heart broken by this one. But I can promise that North will, at least, put you back together again.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer MC with chronic illness, gay MC, M/M
Published on: 27th November 2025
Goodreads
Madeline Miller meets Angela Carter in this spellbinding queer retelling of the 12th-century tale of Bisclavret the werewolf—unmissable for fans of Uprooted by Naomi Novik, Swordcrossed by Freya Marske, and The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden.
A noble knight hiding the beast inside. A lonely king isolated by his courtiers. Between them an impossible gulf surmountable only by the twists and turns of relentless destiny in this spellbinding retelling of Marie de France’s classic 12th-century tale of romance and adventure.
The wolf-sickness strikes always without warning, stealing Bisclavret’s body and confusing his mind. Since boyhood he hasn’t dared leave his isolated holdings—not to beg the return of his father’s lost estate, not to seek brotherhood among the court, not even to win the knighthood he yearns for. But when a new king ascends, Bisclavret must deliver his kiss of fealty or answer for the failure.
Half an exile himself, the young king is intrigued by this uneasy, rough-hewn nobleman. Bisclavret seems a perfect knight: bold, strong, and merciful. But he keeps his secrets close, and the king’s longings are not for counsel alone. As his fascination grows, the barriers between them multiply, until the king battles desperation and grief. Then Bisclavret vanishes beyond reach, just as the greatest threats to the kingdom converge. Only duty to his people stands between the king and ruin—duty, and the steady loyalty of the strangest wolf . . .
I love seeing writers who so clearly love writing, not (just!) in the sense of storytelling but in the sense of what words are for and what they can do, the craft of it. Longman is very obviously such a writer; their debut is written in alternating tenses and persons, third-person, second-person, and full-on VERSE, and every word of it is so powerfully intentional. That’s only one of the most obvious ways that Longman’s craft shows itself; even down to the level of individual sentences, every word feels so intentional, placed with deliberation and care, and thought to the effect it will have on the reader. Maybe that would feel staid and forced from a lesser writer, but The Wolf and His King sings, silken and fluid, infused with the spirit of the Courtly Romance it’s retelling (and that’s Romance in the Medieval sense, not the modern one) even while being perfectly accessible to the modern reader. And using lycanthropy as a metaphor for chronic illness and/or disability, which is arguably the heart of the book, is not only genius, it’s incredibly effective here; I’m not sure any disability story’s ever made me feel so seen before. The Wolf and His King should be studied at university level, and enjoyed by all, in my humble opinion.
And that right there is my list! Did you read any of these? What were YOUR faves this year? I’d love to know!
Ooh I’m glad to see The Raven Scholar making this list! I recommended it to my sister even though I haven’t read it myself and she bought a copy. We have been debating whether it will actually be good haha (mostly because it’s pretty long for us) so this is promising! I think The Incandescent will also make my favourite reads of 2025 list.
I really hope you both like it! Obviously I very much loved it XD And I’m extra excited to see your list if the Incandescent made it on there!