Favourite books of 2025

Tough year, some great books

Author

Eddie
January 08, 2026

I found reading a bit of a struggle in 2025. What with The Horrors, my brain wasn’t always in a position to do extended concentration. I did manage - just - to reach my usual goal of an average of 2 new to me books a week (so, 104 for the calendar year), but this was aided by a fair few novellas, fluffy low effort books, and audiobook listening on my walks.

What I have below are my favourites of the past year* (*including 2 releases from the last 6 weeks of 2024; I find that these often get overlooked in end of year lists so that 6 weeks gets to count for 2 years in my book depending on when I actually read them). There are a few things I’d have really liked to get to this year but didn’t, notably Kate Elliott’s Witch Road books, Sung-Il Kim’s Blood For The Undying Throne, Martha Wells’s Queen Demon, and Sylvia Park’s Luminous, so those won’t be featured here. Neither will this list include any fantasy debuts; I am in my second of 3 years as a judge in the Crawford awards, and you can see what debuts me and the rest of the jury really enjoyed when the award is announced in March.

With that preface out of the way, here, in alphabetical order by author, are some books I really enjoyed in this challenging year past.

Robert Jackson Bennett – A Drop of Corruption

I wrote glowingly about this book (with some analysis of the first book as well) early in the year and my views have not changed over the months since. A hugely successful fantasy mystery. A really interesting exploration of autocracy, empire, and social ordering in the face of disaster. A superbly drawn biohacked setting. And none of it would work without a hugely appealing core duo of characters in Ana and Din, who also have great chemistry. Ultimately a huge amount fun with significantly more depth than the premise might seem to require. I'll read everything RJB cares to write in this setting.

 Ruthanna Emrys and Andrew Knighton – Wiz Duos 3

I have read and enjoyed both Knighton and (especially) Emrys before, so I was excited to see these novellas paired together in a single volume by Wizard Tower Press. The result is an unqualified success. Two high-quality novellas with themes that, while not identical, do absolutely speak to each other; each novella is enhanced by being placed next to the other. Emrys's the Sheltering Flame combines reflections on failure, family, and hospitality with some genuine plot tension and a very interesting take on an incubus. Knighton's Walking a Wounded Land meanwhile is steeped in grief, memory, and regret. Both also happen to be casually queer, and both are (quite different) takes on the essential links between people, place, and community. I think I slightly prefer the Knighton (the prose is particularly incisive), but both are excellent. An unexpected treat.

 

 Isaac Fellman – Notes from a Regicide

Unsurprising from Fellman, but god this is good. Incisive, distinctive, beautiful writing on a sentence level. Ultimately a story about character and family, with all 3 lead characters quite annoying people at times, and yet this does nothing to get in the way of how moving, affective, and effective the portrait of them is. Massively queer, as well. And all this could be done in simply naturalistic fiction; the book is even set in New York, but a New York of several centuries and several feet of sea level rise in the future.

What the SFnal element does - and I think it's indispensible - is the opposite of what SF apologetics usually claims is the utility of SFnal narratives - i.e. make it easier explore real world themes in a nonthreateningly unreal fantasy land or projected future. Fellman, on the other hand, takes these vividly drawn, proudly trans characters out of time and out of contemporary mores as a method of insulating the superb character work from the demands of having to make A Point about the burgeoning anti-queer climate of the current moments. This is particularly true of the almost dreamlike fictional state the chronologically earliest part of the narrative is set in - erehwon as actually nowhere, rather than allegory - but holds across the future setting in general as well. Instead, the story is free to be that of Griffon, Zaffre, and Etoine and how they experience the world and each other.A spectacularly successful, moving book.

 Ginn Hale – Price of A Thousand Blessings: volumes 1 and 2

A SFF hill I will die on is that Ginn Hale should be huge. For almost 20 years she's produced quality, accessible queer SFF with romantic elements of varying centrality (ranging from outright romantasy to fantasy with nice romance subplots); exactly what has been the zeitgeist in SFF publishing the last few years. Perhaps because of the small press she publishes with, perhaps because it isn't neatly romantasy, perhaps because of Hale's (imo really interesting) habit of writing with the vocabulary of high fantasy but the grammar of urban fantasy, perhaps because she primarily focuses on queer men, who are a harder sell outside strict m/m romance, she hasn't had the widespread success the work deserves in the abstract. 

Price of A Thousand Blessings continues that tradition of quality. We have a gaslasp/technofantasy setting (think Republic City-era The Last Airbender), a sympathetic central character and great supporting cast, and a plot which combines action with downtime effectively. Throw in a slow (slooow) burn gay romance plotline and some interesting reflections on empire, revolution, and ecology (all 3 Hale standbys) and you have a top-quality piece of fiction. May not challenge and surprise to the extent of a couple of other things on this list, but it does what it does so well, and more people should be paying attention.

 

 Jon Ingold – Heaven's Vault: The Flood

I really am not averse to tie-in fiction or to novelisations but in most cases they top out at “good”. The Flood – the continuation of Inkle’s excellent game (and the subject of a novelization in the first two books in this series) Heaven’s Vault – is a delightful exception. An unexpected pleasure to have the plot of Heaven's Vault continued (and, appropriately for its themes, backfilled). Ingold is that rare writer of video game prose who can turn a phrase which sings on the page as well as the screen. Well written, engaging, melancholic and elegiac without being hopeless, it lives up to the first part of the story and leaves me eager for its conclusion in the forthcoming fourth book (due out, I believe, this year). If you haven’t played the game and/or read the first two novels, correct that and catch up, you won’t regret it. Genuinely memorable narrative of making and remaking history, language, and meaning. (A little fiddly to get hold of – it is self-published and available only from Inkle’s store, linked below (in ebook & hardcopy editions).

 Karin Lowachee – The Desert Talon and A Covenant of Ice

The opening book of Lowachee’s Crowns of Ishia trilogy of novellas was one of my favourite books of last year; happily the concluding two volumes maintain the standard. The Desert Talon tells focuses on Janan, the husband of one of the major supporting characters from The Mountain Crown, looking at the experience of refugees in lands at best grudgingly welcoming to them and fundamentally incompatible to their ways of living. A Covenant of Ice sees Lilley, Janan, and Méka (the protagonist of the Mountain Crown) dragooned into a mission back to the lands they recently escaped.

The series as a whole is a fascinating exploration of colonialism, modernity, and extractivism, while never neglecting character or setting, and having sufficient plot to keep everything moving appropriately. Doing this in the short word count of each book without anything feeling rushed is a real achievement, possible only because Lowachee is an unflashily excellent writer, packing implicit work on setting and character into virtually every line of dialogue. The series does interesting work with dragons as a metaphor for nature, too, up to and including a conclusion that feels absolutely inevitable but I think many writers would have chickened out of.

 Simon Morden – The Fall of Belhaven

I very much enjoyed Morden’s Petrovitch trilogy of SF thrillers a few years back, so when I saw he had somewhat quixotically self-pubbed a cluster of fantasy novellas in the most low-fi way possible (no ISBN, no ebooks, obtainable only from the author’s website or the lulu print on demand site), I was intrigued enough to check them out, and I was very glad a did. A distinctive blend of Leiber-esque sword & sorcery, grimy realist fantasy, crapsack world cosmic horror set against small acts of hope and kindness and starring a Doctor Who-esque wandering trickster, it all comes together to marvellous effect. The earlier stories (collected in The Floodlands Compendium) overlap without requiring a particular reading order while this most recent release, The Fall of Belhaven, is both the longest story and a reasonably definitive conclusion to the story. The publishing status means it probably won’t be read as widely as it deserves, and that’s a shame. See the link below for options to buy; this is worth enduring some friction to acquire (to be clear, read The Floodlands Compendium first).

 Claire North – Slow Gods

I don’t think Claire North has ever released a book worse than “good”, and Slow Gods is considerably better than that. It is also one of two books on this list that has made me change my mind on a long-held prejudice. I thought I universally disliked unsubtle didacticism in fiction, the author staring the reader full in the face and saying “here is the point I am making, please take it”. And yet I really liked Slow Gods despite it being clompingly obvious in its rage at climate change and capitalism. Across a sweep of decades with a functionally immortal protagonist, the obvious allegory is set across a well-drawn space opera narrative written in North’s typically impeccable prose. She also makes the really interesting choice to have her protagonist someone of significant power and little agency; the comparative restraint set against the scale of the narrative is an effective contrast. In a couple of places I do think the obviousness went a bit far, but by and large North’s first attempt at space opera is a triumph. Turns out setups I don’t tend to like, executed well, can still be really effective.

 Melissa Scott – Point of Hearts

An excellent continuation of one of my all-time favourite fantasy series. Scott’s (and, in earlier works, the late Lisa A Barnett’s) Astreiant is one of the most vivid cities that does not exist in fiction. In this latest instalment, the fantastic work on setting and character continues, and the mystery plot in this one a little more action forward and tension-inducing than usual. And Philip and Nico continue to be one of the few same-sex couples in SFF that you could pull out of the book, dust off and adjust to a modern context, and be completely believable as working adults who love each other. Great stuff, and I'll continue reading this series as long as Scott cares to write it.

 Elijah Kinch Spector – Kalyna the Cutthroat

Kalyna the Soothsayer was a pleasant surprise – and makes a good case for a conscious deployment of snarky narrator as a very effective method of indicating massive unprocessed trauma on the part of that narrator. The sequel is, if anything, even better. Our narrator, Radiant Basket of Rainbow Shells, come into contact with our titular Kalyna in trying to get home from a foreign country in the wake of a racist purge against the minority group he is a part of. The fact that he is running towards a place that is purging his people is one of the first (of many) interesting things about this book. It’s both deeply irrational and – as is clear from the wonderfully drawn “ageing pretty boy academic” narration we get from Radiant – entirely understandable. This project to get home ends up with our characters stalled near the border at a utopian community. The bulk of the narrative unfolds there, with efforts to ensure the viability and survival of the community interspersed with Radiant and Kalyna’s increasingly desperate attempts to help his community. Aside from the rock solid character work (Kalyna’s high wire, seat of her pants improvisation is really interesting seen from the outside), what works particularly well is the reflections on the nature of community and how that is maintained. Community can be a cage, belonging a strait jacket. If it is to be meaningful it requires continual work, compromise, disappointment, and acknowledgement that it all might fail. The fact that Spector understands this contingent and ephemeral nature doesn’t detract from the value of a real community – it is in fact why the attempt to create one has value – makes for a powerful book that deserves to be widely read.

 EJ Swift – When There Are Wolves Again

The second obvious piece of didacticism on this list, this time in the near future SF form. A hopeful but not completely unmoored vision of rewilding and climate adaptation over the 21st century from the perspective of two women involved in activism and documentary filmmaking respectively. The “oh how did anyone think land tenure was compatible with sustainability” and “as you know, we realised X was bad in 2050” bits are obvious, and a little on the nose. But it works, because Swift has an extraordinary light touch with prose and character. The end result is a moving vision of a world we could hope for if enough of us are just a little bit better than current events might suggest.

https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/when-there-are-wolves-again (kobo link because the publisher has both run out of its hardcover print run and has no website for this obvious award bait book.)

 

Re-read: Michelle West – House War Arc 1 (The Hidden City, City of Night, and House Name)

I do re-read a fair bit, but usually in a haphazard fashion (sometimes when my brain is braining badly, the only thing it will tolerate is a re-read of an old favourite). This year I decided to do something a bit more deliberate and re-read the front 2/3 of Michelle West’s Essalieyan metaseries of fat fantasy novels in preparation to read the 5 or so latest ones I’ve yet to read. I hadn’t touched most of these since release, so that’s at least 15 years for the most recent. And I had forgotten how goddamn good these were. There are a couple of different possible starting points for this world; I started with the first arc of the House War series, which I think ultimately is a better entry point than the earlier written Sacred Hunt duology.

Think Robin Hobb meets Melanie Rawn but not as indulgently cruel to her characters; there is darkness here, yes, there is character death and pain, but reasonably quickly you can understand why and where it is trying to take the narrative. That slightly lighter touch matters. It’s also quite an adjustment going back to the pacing of large epic fantasies; initially it feels snail paced. Modern fantasy, even lengthy books, tends extremely pacey – lots of plot per page. These books take a more deliberate, indulgent approach, with deeper description and talkier dialogue (without descending into Robert Jordan-esque “let me describe clothes for 5 pages”). I do think we could do with losing about 5% of the length in a tighter edit, but that’s a quibble. I like this mode of storytelling, and West does it very well.

She is also a very good, and intermittently outstanding prose stylist. It’s rare that writing in a genre that generally favours transparent prose that gets out of the way of the plot causes me to stop in my tracks and read it back; on this reread I’ve done so every few pages. Better than it needs to be in the absolute best way, I hope I’m not the only person (re)discovering these in 2026.