Science Fiction & Fantasy

Service Model

One of the finest purveyors of hard sci-fi writing today, Adrian Tchaikovsky writes on enormous, galaxy-spanning canvases, but with a sense of detail that extends down to the tiniest cog. With his uncanny ability to make heady concepts feel achingly human, there is perhaps no one better suited to write about a robot uprising and make readers root against their own species.

Ghost Station

By S.A. Barnes

With its thoughtfully crafted characters, top-notch pacing and ever-present sense of dread, Ghost Station is another sci-fi horror hit from S.A. Barnes.

The Hemlock Queen

By Hannah Whitten

Hannah Whitten won a fan base with her fantasy Wilderwood duology, and last year’s The Foxglove King proved her bona fides with a tale that was darker and more ambitious than her first two novels. Its sequel, The Hemlock Queen, finds Bastian and Lore seemingly on top and on the verge of changing the city of Dellaire for the better, but in the time-honored tradition of second installments everywhere, things are not only about to take a turn for the worse, but they’re also about to get much more complicated.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts

By Katherine Arden

The author of the marvelous Winterlight trilogy returns to historical fantasy with this haunting tale set during World War I. Former nurse Laura Iven’s parents recently died in an accident, and her brother, Freddie, was declared MIA. But what actually happened to Freddie is far stranger.

House of Flame and Shadow

By Sarah J. Maas

After a cliffhanger that left readers in utter shambles at the end of House of Sky and Breath, Sarah J. Maas’ return to Crescent City is eagerly awaited even by her towering standards. Fans of her other fantasy series know that Maas often waits to reveal the full extent of the story she’s telling until the second or third book in a series; whatever’s revealed in House of Flame and Shadow could blow the preceding book’s cliffhanger out of the water.

Exordia

By Seth Dickinson

The author of the acclaimed Masquerade fantasy series, which follows a woman who infiltrates a powerful empire in order to destroy it from the inside, Seth Dickinson is so devoted to intricate world building that some have labeled his work “hard fantasy” (a la hard science fiction, a subgenre replete with details of futuristic technology). So it’s hardly surprising that Dickinson will be making the leap to sci-fi this year with Exordia, an absolutely wild tale of first contact.