It has to be said, friends: 2024 is winding down. The good news is that it means it’s time to start thinking about all the great sci-fi and fantasy releases that are coming next year! Sure, there are approximately eleventy-million SFF books that I still want to read from this year. But they’re not going anywhere (because I have them locked in my house, muwahahaha!) And as much as it bugs me, there is never a book my brain wants to read more than one it can’t get its grubby little hands on. Like books that aren’t out yet! So instead, I make lists (and lists and lists) of the ones that I am looking forward to reading.
While I try not to play favorites, there are always books that I am more excited about than others. Every reader has them. So I sat down and made a list of the upcoming 2025 SFF releases I want to read the most (which was something like 50) and then I whittled it down to five titles that I think are going to be amazing. You’ll probably want to mark them all down on your TBR, too! It’s a selection from some tried-and-true favorite authors, plus an intriguing debut! Just remember these release dates are not etched in stone, especially this far out, so they may be subject to change (but I hope not.)
Motheater by Linda H. Codega (Erewhon Books, January 21, 2025)
This is a queer debut fantasy set in the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia. When Bennie’s best friend dies in a coal mine, she will stop at nothing to find out why it happened. But an investigation inside the mines unearths more questions than answers. There, Bennie finds a woman half-drowned in mine slough. She says her name is Motheater, but she doesn’t know anything else about herself except that she’s the last witch of Appalachia and she’s been fighting industry on Kire Mountain for over a century. Bennie hopes that with the help of Motheater, she can prove the mines are dangerous. But they’ll need a lot more than magic to fight the industry.
Dark Reading Matter (A Thursday Next Novel) by Jasper Fforde (Soho Press, June 3, 2025)
After over twelve years, fans of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series are getting a new book in the series…and it’s the last one. Dark Reading Matter is to be the eighth and final book in the delightful sci-fi series about Thursday Next, a literary detective. Not much is known about the book right now, except the publisher description mentions that the plot was teased in the last book. I wish I could remember that far back! Looks like I’m going to have to read all the books again before this one comes out.
The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw (Tor Nightfire, July 22, 2025)
If you like your fantasy novels on the darker side, Cassandra Khaw is a great author to know. This upcoming hella-dark fantasy sounds absolutely bananpants! It’s about The Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted, where the all-powerful and enormously evil powers of the world attend. Alessa Li is a student there, kidnapped and forced to enroll. When the faculty eats most of Alessa’s class on graduation day, she and the other survivors become trapped in the library, where they must send out a sacrifice every day to stay safe.
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (William Morrow, January 14, 2025)
Award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor returns with this imaginative story of a disabled Nigerian American writer and features a book-within-a-book! Zelu has always felt like her Nigerian family disapproves of her decision to be a writer. She’s not so sure she approves anymore, either, since none of the literary fiction she has written has been published. After losing her job, Zelu decides to take the time to write something just for herself: a wild sci-fi epic about AI and androids in a war against humanity. Little does she know that when she finds a publisher for her new work, the book will change the world.
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab
V.E. Schwab has a few amazing series under her belt now, and I freak out every time a new book comes out. But I am extra excited right now because next year, we are getting a rare treat: a stand-alone novel! The publisher description doesn’t tell us much, just that there are three young women, in three different centuries, whose bodies are all planted in soil. Each grows in a different way, but “all of them grow teeth.” I have so many questions! And I am so excited!
Okay, star bits, now take the knowledge you have learned here today and use it for good, not evil. If you want to know more about books, I talk about books pretty much nonstop (when I’m not reading them), and you can hear me say lots of adjectives about them on the Book Riot podcast All the Books! and on Instagram.
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