The second, much-anticipated installment in Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb trilogy delivers on its promise of high-energy necromancy and cryptic conundrums. The Reverend Daughter, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, has been transformed into Harrow the First, Ninth Saint to Serve the Emperor. But Harrow the Ninth has been forever altered by her battles in the previous book, Gideon the Ninth, which is told from the point of view of Harrow’s now-deceased cavalier, Gideon Nav.

As the mystery unravels aboard the Emperor’s ghostly space station, Muir’s seamless, inventive writing brings us dreamlike, labyrinthine plots, fantastical timelines and the continuation of secrets so surreal that readers will forever question who truly holds the power in this precarious but beautiful universe. As one of the Lyctors sworn to protect the Emperor, Harrow follows her lord to increasingly terrifying locations as he flees the mysterious Resurrection Beasts—horrifying creatures who ceaselessly attack him and his increasingly weary and rebellion-prone Lyctors.

Whereas Gideon’s story focused on spellbinding swordplay and fleeting crushes on dangerous temptresses with unexpected identities, this book hones in on the very marrow of Harrow—the bone adept’s fears, desires and personal history. Harrow was created by her parents’ morbid sacrifice of all of the Ninth House’s children, and she feels the need to stay true to her roots, always donning the skeletal face paint typical of the Ninth House, practicing her necromancy until her sleepless eyes nearly bleed and remaining nemeses with the narcissistic, ruthless Ianthe Tridentarius, who consumed her own sister and cavalier in her thirst for Lyctorhood. The one piece of herself that Harrow has left behind, however, is any memory of or feeling for Gideon Nav. Harrow’s unbearable grief has forced her to carve the cavalier from her heart and mind. As the perspective fluctuates from a mysterious second-person narrator to an omniscient, unbodied narrator, readers will wonder if Harrow is being haunted, and by whom.

Readers familiar with Gideon-and-Harrowhark, Harrowhark-and-Gideon will revel in the new dangers that threaten the Emperor and his Saints, all of which could only be conjured from the depths of Muir’s wild imagination: the River, an eerie, dangerous experience composed of both insurmountable amounts of energy and a void from which it’s nearly impossible to return; the Body, a vision of Harrow’s one true deceased love who proffers questionable advice and is most definitely not of this world; and a host of revenants, resurrections, hallucinations, illusions, ghosts and—of course—skeletons.

Muir reprises her attention to numerology, mythology, classic literature and intricate, complex secrets, as well as special appearances from the spirits of cavaliers and necromancers recently and historically lost. As secrets spill like the vibrant innards of terminated cavaliers’ corpses, Harrow and the Lyctors must struggle to stay alive as the true price of the Emperor’s power comes to light—and perhaps, justice.

Sambuciña Ahurra, aka Buc, has few possessions: several knives, which she keeps hidden about her person; the dexterity of a 16-year-old former street urchin, sneak thief and pickpocket; an insatiable and compulsive appetite for books; and a mind so sharp she must dull it with depressant drugs to communicate with other people. Her partner, Eldritch Nelson Rawlings—he goes by Eld, understandably—rescued her from the streets and taught her to read two years ago, and has been following where she leads ever since. In all that time, Buc has never made a mistake. That is, until a miscalculation leads to their arrest by Imperial officers. Within a day, the pair of them have been blackmailed into sailing across an ocean to investigate disappearing sugar shipments, launching them into a hurricane of secretive sorcerers, mythical pirates, gods both dead and living, wild hogs and something called Archaeology, whatever that means.

For all its trappings of detective work and mystery, Ryan Van Loan’s The Sin in the Steel is more Locke Lamora (on the high seas) than Sherlock Holmes. Its frantic pace and continuous action capture the reader, but behind its frenzy lurks a truly fascinating world. The economy of Servenza, the archipelagic empire Buc and Eld call home, with its reliance on sugar, tea and the psychoactive herb kan recalls the colonial European powers of the 18th century. Magic is rare but hardly secret; it is very literally a gift from the gods, and its nature varies with the divine source. The resulting limitations, and the grisly details of its use, allow it to easily coexist with a fascinating mix of flintlock-era gunpowder and borderline-futuristic transportation.

But while such a backdrop is necessary to support the story, the plot might founder were it not for its ceaseless motion and the way the mysteries pile up faster than they can be answered. As a stand-alone story, The Sin in the Steel asks the reader to fill in a great many gaps, especially since it leaves almost every thread outside Buc and Eld’s search for the missing sugar itself untied. In some ways, it’s a novel that requires its readers to moonlight as writers. The frustration of questions left unanswered is, in truth, a playground for the creative, inquisitive reader. Van Loan asks his audience to channel their inner Sambuciña, and richly rewards those who follow through.

The Sin in the Steel is not for those who want to be presented with a prepackaged world; some assembly is required. But that assembly is part of the joy of books like this. The leftover mysteries are carefully crafted to capture the imagination, and the hectic unravelling of schemes and unearthing of secrets are well worth the effort needed to keep pace.

Witchcraft has lost some of its bite in the last hundred years. From nose-twitching Samantha to teenage wizards roving the halls of Hogwarts, witchcraft has moved from a dark threat to a childish fantasy. Alexis Henderson’s debut novel, The Year of the Witching, abandons this trend, plunging readers headlong back into a world where magic is a thing to be dreaded and feared.

Despite its dark promise, The Year of the Witching opens with scenes of relative innocence. Immanuelle Moore has always been relegated to the outskirts of Bethel society due to her family’s checkered history and biracial heritage, but she is, all things considered, relatively happy. Even if her very birth was an affront to the Prophet and cast her family into disgrace, she is able to go on Sabbath picnics with her best friend and tend her flock of sheep in the relative safety of Bethel’s fields. But a darker side to Bethel lurks beneath the surface. When Immanuelle stumbles into the Darkwood while chasing a rogue ram, a pair of witches give her a piece of contraband that will change her life forever: her dead mother’s journal. Although its very existence puts Immanuelle’s life and freedom in jeopardy, she is loathe to give up the only connection she has to a woman and a history she never knew. But as she digs deeper into the journal’s pages, Immanuelle discovers a secret about herself that threatens to lead her to ruin—and Bethel towards a reckoning.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Alexis Henderson on growing up in one of America’s most haunted cities.

Alexis Henderson’s novel is heavy, and not because of its page count. The Year of the Witching explores issues of identity, patriarchy and life under a totalitarian theocracy, all of which would be terrifying in their own right. But Henderson introduces us to this world, equal parts The Handmaid’s Tale and 1690s Salem, gently. She allows readers to slowly see for themselves the cracks in Bethel’s pious facade before bringing down the full weight of its horror. That horror necessitates a warning to the faint of heart: This is not the book for you if you even border on squeamish. The Year of the Witching revels in a sort of rich macabre tone, describing scenes of blood and horror so vividly that you can almost smell the putrid flesh of the witches of the Darkwood and feel the harsh stone of the Prophet’s altar. For the wrong reader, The Year of the Witching will fail to do anything but nauseate. But for the right reader—a reader who loves historical fiction and the cold feeling of text-induced terror—this book is a perfect read, certain to terrify, disturb and intrigue from beginning to end.

Imagine this: You’re born into a powerful magical family, part of a storied lineage of mage-rulers. Everyone around you can control life itself. Giant trees grow when they are told to grow, animals rise to defend you and every living thing in your realm is connected, sensed innately no matter where they are. Then imagine that a childhood illness leaves you different, unable to control this life magic. In fact, it leaves you with something worse: a magic that, when you touch something alive, kills it. What kind of person could overcome such loneliness? A new heroine named Ryxander, who stands at the center of Melissa Caruso’s mysterious and wonderful The Obsidian Tower.

In the kingdom of Morgrain, there is a castle. In that castle is a great black tower. And inside the tower, behind innumerable and impenetrable enchantments is a door that should never be opened. As children, the mages of Morgrain recite a poem thousands of years old, a warning that ends with the line “Nothing must unseal the door.” No one knows what is contained in the tower, and Ryxander is the Warden charged with keeping it safe. When a visiting mage ventures too close to the magic of the tower, Ryx finds herself at the center of an international crisis and the only one who knows what’s beyond the door. To avert disaster, she must use all of her wits and talent to keep Morgrain, and the world, safe from unspeakable ruin.

Even from the very first page, I was hooked for one reason: the initial premise here is simple, full of tension and immediately engaging. Even as the central goal of not opening the door plays out, Caruso builds a vivid universe around it, filling the pages with personality and depth. Like a good mystery, Tower slowly feeds the reader with more and more clues, never fully revealing everything at once. Caruso builds and releases tension deftly on both large and small scales. Even short conversations Ryx has with scheming foreign nobles expand and contract as political and personal issues are explored.

Ryx, of course, serves as the host for these explorations. This book has moments of real pain and longing that have nothing to do with magic or towers. Not being able to have physical contact with anyone has changed her, and the choices she has to make to subvert or embrace this fact are beautiful and terrible. It is, therefore, instantly believable that she is made of stronger stuff, making her eventual confrontations with some very nasty magic all the more satisfying.

At the time of this writing, I’m restricted to my house as a global sickness isolates nearly everyone from each other. I can’t help but think that, on a smaller scale, Ryx’s isolation is something many readers can imagine first hand.

Sarah Beth Durst’s latest novel is a direct spiritual successor to the work of Tamora Pierce, whose novels gave many readers their first experience with fantasy and adventure and planted the seed that—if you were determined enough—you could do anything.

Race the Sands introduces us to the arid land of Becar, a land which is ruled by questions of the soul. Reincarnation is real and religious priests, known as augurs, can see your future incarnation by examining your aura. The lucky and kind are reborn as humans, herons and other noble creatures; the less lucky return as lower animals. But for the truly monstrous, only one fate awaits: eternal life as a deadly monster known as a kehok. Redemption is only possible for kehoks fierce and fast enough to win the Races.

But for Tamra and Raia, winning the Races has nothing to do with spiritual redemption. It is kehok trainer Tamra’s only chance to prevent financial ruin and to prevent the augurs from taking her daughter away. And Raia, a runaway desperate to escape an arranged marriage to a known abuser, has a chance to buy her own freedom should she win the Races as a rider. Even if that means taking a chance on a strange kehok that could just as easily kill its rider as win.

Race the Sands gives us some expected archetypes: the grizzled, injured veteran, the emperor-to-be who is not quite ready for the job, the plucky young heroine who must overcome the odds and win the day. What it also gives us, however, is a story that takes these worn tropes and turns them into something unique. Our grizzled veteran is also a caring mother, and our plucky heroine sometimes shrinks in the face of danger. Durst’s prose gives readers a window into the inner lives of her characters and the difficult decisions they must make, turning what could be worn tropes into lively, well-developed characters.

It would be easy for a story set in a world where many are obsessed with the purity of their souls to veer towards facile interpretations of morality and human behavior. But like all great world builders, Durst thinks through how people would interact with her world carefully and does not create characters who are pure saints or who are irredeemable. While Tamra, Raia and their associates do occasionally worry about the state of their own souls, they are still people. They tell white lies about jam being good when it actually isn’t and worry about their families. Some are downright foul, for even the threat of a monstrous afterlife can’t always change human nature.

For readers who long for one more story of Tortall or the Winding Circle, consider Race the Sands as a new, grown-up alternative. Durst’s latest novel, full of daring races and twisting halls of intrigue, will surprise and delight even as it feels comforting and familiar.

What makes a city feel the way it does? Is it the art and the music? The people and how they view themselves? What about the infinite, minuscule details of the place, whether they are recognized or ignored completely? Three-time Hugo Award winner N.K. Jemisin shows us her version of the answers, and they add up to something bigger than the sum of its parts. In The City We Became, a magical novel of breadth and precision, Jemisin builds a version of New York City that is more than the borders of its boroughs. This New York is alive.

Cities, we learn, are like any other living organism. They are born, they develop, they get sick, they can die. Like a hive communicating through a shared consciousness, a city is sustained by everyone and everything in it. At a certain stage of life, cities awaken avatars, people who are attuned to this consciousness, able to understand it and, from time to time, channel its power.

Cities also have enemies. When a primordial evil arrives through space and time, hellbent on corrupting and destroying New York, the avatars of all five boroughs awaken to do battle—and fight off what could be the death of the city.

I’ve not read another book like this in years. Jemisin takes a concept that can be abstracted to the simplest of questions (What if cities were alive?) and wraps an adventure around it. That adventure takes center stage in the many scenes that read more like a superhero movie than a fantasy novel, such as when a towering Lovecraftian tentacle bursts from the river to destroy the Williamsburg Bridge. However, Jemisin’s most beautiful passages deliver attentive descriptions of New York’s melting pot of people. Her characters’ life experiences—racial, sexual, financial—bring perspectives that are deeply important to and often missing from contemporary literature, particularly in the fantasy genre.

Jemisin lives in Brooklyn, and it’s clear that New York has impacted her life in innumerable ways. I confess, I don’t know New York well myself, but reading this book left me thinking about my own city, how I’m connected to it and how far I would go to save it. To what parts of the whole have I contributed? If it were alive, what would it say?

The land of Jin-Sayeng has been torn apart by civil war, its longtime rulers, the Ikessar Dragonlords, deposed by the Oren-Yaro clan after they lost their vaunted dragons. The planned marriage between Talyien, the new queen of Jin-Sayeng and daughter of the late Oren-Yaro warlord, and Rayyel, last scion of the Ikessars, has disintegrated. So when Talyien receives a message from her estranged husband, offering her a chance at reconciliation, she leaves her fractured country in secret for a meeting in the neighboring empire of Zirinar-Orxiaro. There she finds herself ensnared in a web of plots and deceits, forced to survive assassination attempts, forbidden magics, slavers and lecherous mob bosses while struggling to discover who is responsible for the chaos and what they have planned for her and the country she wants to save.

K.S. Villoso’s The Wolf of Oren-Yaro is a fascinating read, driven by a well-drawn cast of characters in a beautifully imagined world. None of the main characters is lacking in complexity, and Villoso gives each of them rational motivations. There are no truly evil figures in this novel, only people who are willing to justify varying amounts of immorality and harm to achieve their purposes. Those who come closest to a traditional antagonist’s role are merely those whose goals are selfish or banal, whose regard for other people is low. Although both Jin-Sayeng and Zirinar-Orxiaro are built on a magical bedrock, the realistic characters within them lend The Wolf of Oren-Yaro a bite that even the darkest of grimdark fantasy often lacks.

Villoso palpably renders the moral grime and corruption that pervades almost every scenario Talyien encounters. And she distinguishes Talyien’s few safe havens with a remarkable subtlety. At no point does Villoso’s own voice disappear; rather, she merely wields it differently to imply different atmospheres. The superb world building combined with the well-built dramatic structure of the novel draws the reader on in a way that solely ramping up the tension would not. The Wolf of Oren-Yaro tops it all off with a battery of cliffhangers involving Talyien’s past and the nature of magic itself that bodes well for the rest of the series.