Fantasy

A Drop of Corruption

Robert Jackson Bennett’s superb new mystery series is best described as Sherlock Holmes in a high-fantasy version of Pacific Rim, but even that comparison doesn’t quite capture the inventive, character-driven cleverness of The Tainted Cup. In the follow-up, eccentric, brilliant sleuth Ana Dolabra and her long-suffering assistant are faced with an even more puzzling case than their first: A treasury officer has disappeared from a heavily guarded government building, even though all the windows and doors were locked.

The Dark Mirror

By Samantha Shannon

Before she became one of BookTok’s most beloved authors with The Priory of the Orange Tree and A Day of Fallen Night, Samantha Shannon was the wunderkind author of The Bone Season series, a futuristic fantasy set in a Europe where magic is illegal. It’s been four years since Shannon’s last Bone Season novel, and fan fervor for this fifth installment is at an all-time high.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

By V. E. Schwab

V.E. Schwab has penned many, many bestselling novels, but The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue was a blockbuster hit by even her high standards. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil seems to be a return to the dreamy, accessible historical fantasy of Addie LaRue, this time focusing on three women in different eras who are magically linked.

Katabasis

By R.F. Kuang

After a quick little detour telling the publishing industry about itself (2023’s ferocious satire, Yellowface), R.F. Kuang is back to fantasy and working in the mode that she, as an accomplished scholar, absolutely dominates: dark academia. And this time, it’s a dark academia love story. Between two scholars who have to go to hell to save their adviser’s soul. We do not deserve her.

The Listeners

By Maggie Stiefvater

The adored author of YA classics The Raven Cycle, The Scorpio Races and the Shiver Trilogy will finally make her adult debut with The Listeners, which seems of a piece with the dreamy, fabulist fantasy of The Raven Cycle. The Listeners will follow a midcentury hotel owner who is the only person who can “manage” the possibly/probably magical hot springs that have made the West Virginia hotel a luxury destination. However, it’s also 1942, and when the hotel owners make a deal with the State Department to house captured Axis diplomats, the beautiful environs are soon crawling with Nazis.