In S. C. Emmett’s entry to a new fantasy epic, The Throne of the Five Winds, a lady-in-waiting to the princess of a vanquished land plays a dangerous game of political intrigue.

When the Empire of Zhaon conquers Khir, Princess Mahara is betrothed to the crown prince of Zhaon. Yala, a lady-in-waiting must leave her home alongside Mahara and journey to the center of the rival country, where all six of the aging ruler’s sons are ruthlessly plotting to claim the throne. Emmett’s book requires incredible attention to every word on the page as both Yala and the reader are thrust into a foreign political battle of assassins, careful messages and strategically offered cups of tea. Conversations between characters stretch across pages; each interaction is spiked with schmoozing, scheming and scowling. Emmett even lingers over his characters’ accents—rather than forgetting them or breezing over them, Emmett describes their differences in syllabic detail. In The Throne of the Five Winds, characters’ reactions and facial tells are artfully crafted, conveying each aspect of social interaction with incredible detail and precision.

The political plot moves slowly, but peeling each layer of conversational detail will keep readers consistently interested. The sheer number of players on the board (two queens, six princes, a Khir princess, our main character Yala, a warlord-king, his primary attendant and a seemingly infinite number of political secondaries) results in a near-endless web of relationships. Each primary character has two or three relevant titles and politically important traits that influence the style of their interactions. (This meant I had a ridiculous amount of sticky notes exploding from my book, like a colorful papier-mâché hedgehog). The grand prize of becoming Emperor is a relatively simple goal, which at least made sorting through motivations a bit easier.

There is a serious learning curve through the first 100 pages (you really should see how many sticky notes I used), but the Zhaon empire and the kingdom of Khir are well worth exploring, despite the time investment required. The world is constructed well: Color is added to the world for context, never dumped on readers like an unfriendly reminder of history class from high school. Inserting colloquial names for plants, creatures and roles is a favorite trope of mine, and Emmett employs it liberally, if a mite too much (for example, a “dragonwing” is just a big dragonfly). The world feels real and expansive, complete with implied trade relations, a rich diversity of culture and five languages.

The Throne of the Five Winds will appeal to patient readers; the quick-witted banter of modern superhero movies is nowhere to be found within its pages. Instead of fencing with quick verbal stabs and sardonic ripostes, Yala and crew are brutally sharp social gunfighters, holding their draws, each of their statements spoken with lethal concision. Those without such patience are almost always vulnerable and open to attack from more skilled fighters. Moving through Emmett’s socio-political fantasy drama is quite an undertaking, but definitely one worth attempting.

Ylfing has buried his name and become a Chant. Or at least, he’s gone through the motions. But although he’s mastered the art of telling stories, he hates it, and has spent the years since his master-Chant left him trying to become something else. When he accidentally becomes embroiled in a questionable business venture involving pungent glow-in-the-dark flowers, he starts telling stories again. Just not the good kind. Not the ones he cares about, pours his heart into and tells to the wind. But all the same, these stories carry enough power to make a fortune or—as the story grows too fast to control and mania surrounding the flowers builds—break a city. As this new enterprise unfolds, Chant-who-was-Ylfing meets another master-Chant whose views on the profession are quite different from those he was taught, and starts to realize that he does not need to be his master to be a Chant. And maybe, just maybe, he can save the city he has unwittingly set on the path to destruction.

The most striking feature of Alexandra Rowland’s latest novel, A Choir of Lies, are its snarky footnotes. The entire book is written as a manuscript with extensive editorial commentary, ranging from excising entire chapters and railing at the ethical implications of the project in general to questioning specific vocabulary choices. There is even an extensive commentary on the choice of a language with inadequate pronouns for the gender-fluid society depicted in the book. These footnotes are also the clearest implementation of Rowland’s notable skill at tailoring their prose to character. Unlike the first book in this series, A Conspiracy of Truths, Choir of Lies is narrated by just one protagonist, resulting in a more consistent style across most of the chapters. However, the portions written by the editor (who shall remain nameless here) are markedly different, and even change tone over the course of the novel, showing the arc of a character as they progress through the book with the reader. It’s a fascinating meta-literary experience, made all the more compelling by the moments when the nameless editor appears in the narrative itself.

Setting aside Rowland’s technical skill, their plot and characters are compelling as ever. They continue to offer tantalizing slices of a comprehensive, well-designed world. Whereas A Conspiracy of Truths was set in a Kafkaesque morass of graft and bureaucracy, A Choir of Lies takes place in a fantastical Amsterdam analog, complete with massive dikes, mercantile rivalries and a coterie of visiting Italians—pardon, Pezians—who may or may not have latent magical powers. The crisis facing this fictional trading city is, of course, financial, and it is instigated by a trading war for the least significant of crops: a flower that stinks to high heaven and is only pretty at night. And through it all, Chant-who-was-Ylfing remains equally endearing and infuriating, a skaldic puppy in provocative pants whose crisis of faith nearly destroys a nation.

A Choir of Lies should be on the reading list of any fan of darkly comic fantasy. Preferably just below its predecessor. Stories should be told in order, after all.

When alchemist’s apprentice Jolan “Flawless” Silas Bershad, a former noble heir and the most successful dragonslayer in Almira, the legendary and unkillable warrior is passed out drunk. In the remainder of Blood of an Exile’s first chapter, Bershad adds another dragon to his tally, but not without surviving what should have been fatal wounds. He is then commanded by his old nemesis Hertzog Malgrave, king of Almira, to return to the capital.

Once there, the king gives the warrior a proposal: infiltrate the impenetrable border of the Balarian Empire, assassinate the Emperor and rescue the king’s kidnapped daughter, in exchange for a pardon. The final incentive? Hertzog’s eldest daughter Ashlyn, once Bershad’s betrothed, supports the plan. Meanwhile, a mysterious man named Garrett makes his way through the Almiran countryside, leaving chaos in his wake. Following in the tradition of grimdark fantasy, Bershad’s quest is littered with moral ambiguity and viscera, and neither his survival nor the survival of his homeland is at all assured.

Brian Naslund’s thoroughly enjoyable debut could easily be yet another entry in the rapidly growing canon of gritty fantasy, but it distinguishes itself by the depth of its environment. In fact, this fantasy epic features a war over the ecological impacts of dragon hunting and includes a compendium of the various species of dragon as an appendix. Naslund displays equal fluency when crafting vivid battles and compelling, slightly wonkish academic disputes. And to his credit, although he doesn’t shy away from sex or gore, he doesn’t rely on them to carry the novel either and instead relies on the tension of his plot.

The one possible weakness in Blood of an Exile, at least for fans of darker fantasy novels, is the occasional softening of its adherence to grimdark plot devices. Unlike similar authors Abercrombie or Cook, the moral ambiguity of Naslund’s protagonists can seem a little forced. However, the story is compelling all the same. This is a hybrid of grimdark and high fantasy, with a fairly typical quest to save the world seasoned with descriptive grit and an incredibly thorough, well-designed world.

Blood of an Exile is a perfect choice for readers who want an intelligent, well-crafted fantasy novel that draws on the grimdark aesthetic but prefer their stories without any extra helpings of hopelessness.

Sometimes it can feel as if the world of science fiction and fantasy is nothing but epic tales spanning thousands of pages and dozens of books. And while those reads are enjoyable, sometimes a good novella is just what the librarian ordered. C.S.E. Cooney’s Desdemona and the Deep, the standalone third book in the Dark Breakers series, is a perfect palate cleanser.

The land of Seafall is a study in excess, and Desdemona is at the center of it all with nothing to occupy her mind except her mother’s dreadful charity events and her best friend, Chaz. But that was before she learned the origin of her family’s fortune. Her father’s family made a series of deals with the goblin king, the latest of which left hundreds dead and a handful trapped in the world below. Determined to right her family’s wrongs, Desdemona embarks on a quest to enter the underground worlds to bargain for the lives her father callously threw away.

One of the things that makes Desdemona and the Deep so compelling is that in its scant pages, Cooney manages to sketch the boundaries and vagaries of not just one fantastic world, but of three. Desdemona’s world, the world above, is a too-real Gilded Age nightmare where the poor suffer to make the opulent lives of robber barons possible. The worlds below are equally vivid, the dark and sharp world of the goblins standing in stark contrast to the gentry’s light and dreamy plane. That the three worlds are so distinct would be impressive in a much longer book. Within the confines of novella, it is a feat.

Another thing that makes Cooney’s world building remarkable is that, unlike many fantasy writers, she isn’t content to plop a society much like ours onto a foreign set. If sculptures can come to life, Cooney’s world asks us, is it really so strange to have a world that is more accepting and affirming of its LGBTQ citizens? Of course not. And that’s part of the power of these worlds. It’s not just their ability to showcase the fantastical. It’s their ability to showcase both the best of what humanity could be and the worst of what we have been.

The one drawback to Cooney’s latest novella is also one of the things that makes it so fun: It’s a novella. The shortened format means that Chaz and Desdemona’s story almost feels cut short because we don’t get to see as much of the worlds below as we might in a longer novel. But their journey is still a well-crafted one. A gripping tale from beginning to end, Desdemona and the Deep is a great read for anyone who loves a good fairy story.