In Nikan, opium opens the gateway to the gods. Confined to their Pantheon in the spirit realm, they can only hope to influence the choices of those on earth with whispered promises through the haze of pipe smoke. For Rin, an undersized orphan, the thought of communing with the gods is terrifying. But as the drums of war begin to beat in R.F. Kuang’s extraordinary debut novel The Poppy War, Rin discovers that a day might come when she has no choice.

After testing into Sinegard, the most elite military academy in Nikan, Rin Fang discovers she is special. Through training with a seemingly insane professor, her shamanistic ability to conjure fire starts to blossom. When Mugen, a militaristic empire who defeated Nikan in previous Poppy Wars, invades their homeland, the students find themselves dispersed into the middle of a horrific ground war. Rin, conscripted into a misfit band of shaman outcasts, must fight both the ever-advancing Mugen army and her increasing sense that something inside her desperately wants to escape. Her sanity might be the price of finding the answers.

R.F. Kuang must first be congratulated on seamlessly drawing on and then reshaping Chinese history as influence for the world Rin inhabits. Martial arts sparring sessions and colorful street parades instantly conjure images of western Asian culture, but at no point does this world ever feel like a simple reflection of our own. Nikan’s richly detailed culture and history feel substantial and authentic, supporting the characters’ actions as the war unfolds.

And when that war begins, it’s almost shocking in its realness. It is not a conflict fought far away as Rin sits idly in a classroom. The violence is immediate, visceral and wrenching, pulling on the reader’s sense of disgust and anger. The “war is hell” trope plays out solemnly and intimately here, leaving no character untouched. By the climax of the narrative, everyone the reader meets is scarred.

Thank goodness we have Rin to lead us through it. Her tenacity, stubbornness and insecurity are instantly sympathetic and Kuang’s attention to Rin’s feelings opens up oceans of emotional depth. There’s a definite weight to Rin’s conflicting choices that only builds as the suspenseful final act plays out. It would be a thrill to see Rin, fresh from the crucible of The Poppy War, on the pages of a sequel novel. With such a brilliant start, one can’t help but think how certain hers and Kuang’s futures surely are.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with R.F. Kuang about The Poppy War.

In an alternate version of ancient Rome, mages blessed by the gods wield elemental magic, shaping the land and the people within it. For years, the dictator Ocella ruled Aven with fear, working to strip the society of all the trappings of the Republic, and killing entire families of Senators and bureaucrats who displeased him. After her sister’s husband is put to death, noblewoman Latona was forced into service of the dictator as mage and (presumably) as mistress. With his death, she and her sisters are free once more.

But keeping her powers suppressed for so long has come at a price: Latona now struggles to keep control over her growing powers as she relaxes the suppression over her gift. Simultaneously, the death of the dictator has left a power vacuum within the political arena. Among the men who would seek to gain power and guide Aven to greater glory is Sempronius Tarren. His political machinations bring him together with Latona, setting them both on a path that is as dangerous as it is unclear.

From Unseen Fire is brilliantly imagined and plotted. Its world is rich, with no detail left unattended to. Cass Morris has generated Tolkien-level tomes of information about the world of Aven to make the world come alive. And come alive it does. The city and the world we explore teem with life, and not just of the alternate-Roman variety. The different cultures that intersect in Aven have different motivations, different gods and different ways of practicing magic. This level of within-world work gives From Unseen Fire a verisimilitude that can be missing from similar books.

And the level of work Morris put into this book isn’t just seen through world building. Every character (with perhaps the exception of Latona’s unfortunate husband) seems like they could be the lead of a story all their own, happening just offscreen. Readers don’t always know where they are going but always have the sense that, while characters may walk out of the frame, their movements are not unaccounted for. Morris knows where they are and what they are doing at all times, in the sort of instinctive way you know where your hand is even in the dark. This mastery of character development prevents Morris’ plot-heavy book from overpowering its characters.

With so much plot and so many characters, Morris has to take the beginning of the book slowly—any faster, and readers would lose the thread and not be able to tell one character from another. The beginning is definition-heavy, dragging the reader through exposition rather than letting us discover things for ourselves through the actions and words of Morris’s brilliantly developed characters. And the slow pacing does begin to wear on the reader in one major way. Latona is obviously the heroine, but it is not immediately clear that Sempronius is a main character, flawed or otherwise. His chapters come too far and few between in the early chapters to make much of an impact, and it is not immediately clear that we as readers should trust him any more than we trust his political opponents. That unpredictability does, however, become part of Sempronius’s charm as he grows into his role as leading man.

But while the beginning of From Unseen Fire may drag slightly, once things get going, they fly. The book rockets along at breakneck speed through the machinations of the Senate, and the public (and personal) struggles of Latona and Sempronius. Any wait at the beginning is well worth it as the pieces fall into place as the book progresses. Readers who are patient enough to let Cass Morris build the world around them will be rewarded handsomely with an amazing ride.

Anthologies can be dismissed as attempts to get more work out the door from bestselling authors. This tendency might lead some readers to neglect a book of staggering beauty. The Tangled Lands, a joint effort between Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell, isn’t just good for an anthology. It soars.

The four parts of The Tangled Lands tell the story of a failing civilization. Its last hope, the Blue City of Khaim, is under the stranglehold of both its rulers and a menacing magic bramble. The bramble, a nearly mystical force, grows insatiably in the presence of magic. The slightest spell fertilizes it, allowing it to grow and swallow houses, fields and even entire cities. The people of Khaim fight against the bramble, burning and cutting it back every day even as they deal with the stream of refugees from already fallen cities. Khaim’s last magister, Archmage Scacz, has made any use of magic punishable by death, even as he creates his own sorcery-fueled castle in the sky. All the while, the people of Khaim toil on, hoping to eke out an existence before the tide of bramble swallows them as well.

While many characters stand out within The Tangled Lands, the anthology’s greatest creation is the city of Khaim. One of the great issues with world building, especially when an author is constructing a place alien to our own, is that it requires a fair bit of explanation. In the hands of less talented storytellers, it can feel less like fiction and more like an interesting history class. Bacigalupi and Buckell build their world so precisely that everything feels natural and inevitable. Instead of seeming alien, their fantasy world gives the reader the sense that they are strolling into a world they already know.

One of the most difficult things about this anthology is that there are no easy answers. Some may see this as a weakness of the second set of stories, “The Children of Khaim” and “The Blacksmith’s Daughter.” Both tales are gloomy, and it could be argued that there is no payoff for the emotional investment that the two stories demand. There is only the smallest sliver of hope and little resolution—but that is the point. The city of Khaim, despite the best efforts of its tyrants, isn’t just destined to fall. It is fallen, even if its residents and rulers haven’t accepted it yet. What life—what hope—can really come out of a city like that? The payoff is there, even if it isn’t always what we want it to be.

That may seem like a dour view of The Tangled Lands, but all four stories are beautiful, subtle and well worth every moment spent reading them. Their writers understand not just how to give readers what they want but also how to write stories that couldn’t have happened any other way.

On the mountain of Fireach Speuer, only the strong survive. Warring tribes raid one another for food and slaves. The winters are harsh, and when the blood moon rises, a demon creature hunts the living with ravenous fury. It’s a harsh setting, but Aoleyn, the fiery and engaging female lead of R.A. Salvatore’s Child of a Mad God, makes each moment spent in this world a treasure.

Aoleyn dreams of joining the Usgar tribe’s coven of witches like her mother before her. But as she grows up, she can’t ignore the brutality of the society in which she lives. The physical savagery visited upon slaves, the hollowness of marriage and myriad other abuses prime Aoleyn for an awakening. When her immense magical powers manifest in her 18th year, she finally discovers a way to break free of the tribe’s iron grip and confront the evil presence infecting her homeland.

This challenging environment is made all the more daunting by the sense of remoteness that permeates the book. Salvatore regularly reminds the reader how far away these tribes are from the rest of his world, using places and people familiar to readers of his other Corona novels as anchors to the larger universe. It’s skillfully done—hints of his other novels shine through, but past references never bog down the story at hand. And intercut with Aeolyn’s story is the perspective of the demon creature, which constantly reminds the reader what lurks in the darkness.

Aoleyn’s metamorphosis from stubborn child to powerful witch propels the reader through this harrowing story, as we feel her fear, frustration and, ultimately, resolve. Never satisfied with the narrow life her tribe offers her and willing to endure painful trials to get what she wants, Aoleyn captivates from the very first line, and is sympathetic and centered throughout.

Salvatore should be commended for cutting a new path here, and as this is the first book in a series, readers will reap the benefits. Grand palaces and shining swords are traded for roaring fires and whistling peaks. This is fantasy refreshed, with familiar concepts reconfigured for a new arc. Luckily, we’ll have a wonderful heroine to pull us along for the ride.

Winters in Rachel Neumeier’s Winter of Ice and Iron can get pretty rough. As snow and ice blanket the Four Kingdoms, the obsidian winds rip down from the mountains, the night lasts for days and massive winter dragons terrorize commoners and nobles alike. Fortunately for us, the characters that Neumeier weaves into her tale of ambition, duty and family are more than ready to face it all.

When the Mad King of Emmer threatens her native Haravir, Princess Kehera rides to the border to avert all-out war. On the way, she discovers there are forces and powers at play far beyond her understanding, and she is forced to go on the run. In the forbidding mountains of Ëaneté, she is scooped up by Innisth, the Wolf Duke, a man as forbidding as the land he rules. Though he is cold and strict, Kehera senses something powerful in him. Innisth, in turn, conceives of a way Kehera can help him realize his close-guarded ambitions.

The reason they sense something in one another is that both Kehera and Innisth hold ties to Immanent Powers, one of Winter of Ice and Iron’s most inventive elements. These magical, non-sentient elementals naturally form over generations, drawing power from the earth, the creatures and the people that inhabit their realm. Neumeier confidently employs these Powers, lending an ethereal and whirling grace to every appearance they make in the narrative. They are both the paint used to color this world and a reflection of the people that wield them.

And Kehera and Innisth are just as enthralling. The two ricochet off one another, giving each a sense of purpose and forward motion. Even with other memorable characters throughout, Kehera and Innisth command the reader’s attention from the moment they meet.

Neumeier’s experience in the fantasy space, borne out in works like The Griffin Mage Trilogy, shines in this latest work. Winter of Ice and Iron is dark and unflinching, but also surefooted and heartfelt. From their first meeting through the gripping final sequence, real emotion and real history drive Kehera and Innisth’s ever-evolving relationship. What a welcome way to bear out the winter.