For the past few years, there have been so many speculative fiction books that sound wonderful that it has been difficult to narrow down a list of anticipated releases to a somewhat reasonable number. Like the last couple of years, I scoured the web for book descriptions and interviews with their authors, early reviews, and excerpts to learn more about some of the books coming out this year. (And of course, there were some books that were already on my list because I loved the previous book in the series or other books by the same author.) In the end, I came up with 24 science fiction and fantasy books I wanted to highlight for 2023.
As always, this is not a comprehensive list of all the speculative fiction books being published this year: these are just the books I came across that sound most captivating to me. This includes fantasy inspired by various mythologies and histories, space opera, foes having to work together, a couple of books featuring animals (including a giant bird of prey), stories with dark magics, dark academia and a dragon academy, a couple of creepy houses, and more. I hope those of you with similar tastes and interests discover some books here that appeal to you, too.
These books are ordered by scheduled publication date, if they have one, and these are US release dates unless otherwise stated.
Due to the length of this blog post, I’m only showing the first 6 books on the main page. You can click the title of the post or the ‘more…’ link after the sixth book to read the entire article.
Cover images link to Bookshop if available, and the rest link to Amazon or other pages for the book. As a Bookshop affiliate and Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
The Daughters of Izdihar (The Alamaxa Duology #1) by Hadeer Elsbai
Read or Listen to an Excerpt
Scheduled Release Date: Out Now (Released January 10)
This debut novel is the beginning of a fantasy duology inspired in part by the women’s suffrage movement in Egypt during the 1950s and its leader, Doria Shafik. Hadeer Elsbai discussed her new novel in an interview on The Nerd Daily, which includes this overview:
Readers can expect a somewhat slice-of-life fantasy that tackles patriarchy and examines the intersections of injustice and privilege. There’s sapphic romance, hidden easter eggs for Egyptian readers, trope subversions, female friendships, a vast array of female characters, a magic school, and elemental magic.
This sounds wonderful, especially its themes and magic… and female friendships… and subverting tropes… Ok, it just sounds all-around fantastic!
From debut author Hadeer Elsbai comes the first book in an incredibly powerful new duology, set wholly in a new world, but inspired by modern Egyptian history, about two young women—Nehal, a spoiled aristocrat used to getting what she wants and Giorgina, a poor bookshop worker used to having nothing—who find they have far more in common, particularly in their struggle for the rights of women and their ability to fight for it with forbidden elemental magic
As a waterweaver, Nehal can move and shape any water to her will, but she’s limited by her lack of formal education. She desires nothing more than to attend the newly opened Weaving Academy, take complete control of her powers, and pursue a glorious future on the battlefield with the first all-female military regiment. But her family cannot afford to let her go—crushed under her father’s gambling debt, Nehal is forcibly married into a wealthy merchant family. Her new spouse, Nico, is indifferent and distant and in love with another woman, a bookseller named Giorgina.
Giorgina has her own secret, however: she is an earthweaver with dangerously uncontrollable powers. She has no money and no prospects. Her only solace comes from her activities with the Daughters of Izdihar, a radical women’s rights group at the forefront of a movement with a simple goal: to attain recognition for women to have a say in their own lives. They live very different lives and come from very different means, yet Nehal and Giorgina have more in common than they think. The cause—and Nico—brings them into each other’s orbit, drawn in by the group’s enigmatic leader, Malak Mamdouh, and the urge to do what is right.
But their problems may seem small in the broader context of their world, as tensions are rising with a neighboring nation that desires an end to weaving and weavers. As Nehal and Giorgina fight for their rights, the threat of war looms in the background, and the two women find themselves struggling to earn—and keep—a lasting freedom.
Spice Road (Spice Road #1) by Maiya Ibrahim
Read an Excerpt
Scheduled Release Date: Out Now (Released January 24)
Maiya Ibrahim’s debut novel, the beginning of a YA epic fantasy series, has tea magic inspired by reading about Arab spice traders and how they tried to keep others away from desirable spices: by making up stories about monsters guarding the places they grew. I was especially intrigued by what she had to say about her law background being helpful when worldbuilding in this interview at The Quiet Pond:
Law is a surprisingly useful background to have when it comes to worldbuilding. Knowing how real-world governments and legal systems work has helped enormously in building functioning fantasy societies. Thematically, I’ve always been interested in the concepts of justice and the rule of law. What happens when not everyone has equal access to justice? Or when some members of a society aren’t subject to the same laws as everyone else? I think these questions boil down to issues of privilege, corruption, and inequality, and these are all themes I explore both in Spice Road and other works.
The whole Q&A is great, and the author’s discussion of her book, protagonist, and influences made me want to pick up her novel.
The first book in an epic fantasy series for fans of Sabaa Tahir, Hafsah Faizal and Elizabeth Lim, set in an Arabian-inspired land. Raised to protect her nation from the monsters lurking in the sands, seventeen-year-old Imani must fight to find her brother whose betrayal is now their greatest threat.
In the hidden desert city of Qalia, secret spice magic awakens affinities in those who drink the misra tea. With her affinity for iron, seventeen-year-old Imani can wield a dagger like no other – and for that she has gained a reputation as the next greatest Shield, battling djinn, ghouls, and the other monsters spreading across the sands.
Her reputation has been overshadowed, however, by her brother, who tarnished the family name after it was revealed that he was stealing their nation’s coveted spice—a tell-tale sign of magical obsession. Soon after that, he disappeared, believed to have perished beyond the Forbidden Wastes. Despite her brother’s betrayal, there isn’t a day that goes by when Imani doesn’t grieve him.
Then Imani discovers signs her brother may be alive, and spreading their nation’s magic to outsiders. Desperate to find him – and to protect him – she joins the mission sent to hunt him down.
Accompanied by Taha, a powerful beastseer who enthrals and enrages her in equal measure, Imani soon discovers that many secrets lie beyond the Forbidden Wastes – and in her own heart.
Caught between her duty to her nation, and her love for her brother, she must decide where her loyalties lie… before it is too late.
Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo
Scheduled Release Date: March 14
This science fiction novella by Summer Suns author Lee Mandelo sounds like it explores some fascinating subjects. In the book announcement on Tor.com, the author said:
The novella emerged from the earliest months of the COVID-19 lockdowns, which for me were spent in full isolation pouring research reading from a social theory seminar on animals into my eyeballs… then stewing in the resultant swamp of ethical discomfort, grim awareness of the world around me caught fire, and gnawing disillusionment with the procedures of academia. At its core Feed Them Silence is digging at the underbelly of neoliberalism, scientific research, and the unavoidable sticky web of power—whether that appears in the marital arena, like Sean’s complicated relationship to her wife, or between human and non-human beings, like the researchers and their wolf.
Lee Mandelo and editor Carl Engle-Laird both contributed some thoughts on the book, and the questions surrounding human/animal relationships they discuss sound especially interesting to me. (Plus I like wolves.)
Lee Mandelo dives into the minds of wolves in Feed Them Silence, a novella of the near future.
What does it mean to “be-in-kind” with a nonhuman animal? Or in Dr. Sean Kell-Luddon’s case, to be in-kind with one of the last remaining wild wolves? Using a neurological interface to translate her animal subject’s perception through her own mind, Sean intends to chase both her scientific curiosity and her secret, lifelong desire to experience the intimacy and freedom of wolfishness. To see the world through animal eyes; smell the forest, thick with olfactory messages; even taste the blood and viscera of a fresh kill. And, above all, to feel the belonging of the pack.
Sean’s tireless research gives her a chance to fulfill that dream, but pursuing it has a terrible cost. Her obsession with work endangers her fraying relationship with her wife. Her research methods threaten her mind and body. And the attention of her VC funders could destroy her subject, the beautiful wild wolf whose mental world she’s invading.
Lone Women by Victor LaValle
Scheduled Release Date: March 21
Though I don’t read a lot of horror, I was curious about this novel, both because I’d heard good things about Victor LaValle’s writing and because I found the historical inspiration intriguing. A Columbia University article on the author discusses this aspect of Lone Women (and the upcoming TV adaptation of The Changeling):
Of Lone Women, LaValle says, “It’s about women homesteaders in Montana in 1915. I stumbled across a book that said the US government was so desperate to have this land homesteaded after taking it from the Native Americans who lived there, that they essentially relaxed what would have been the usual legal prejudices at the time.”
Lone Women is the only book mentioned in this post that I’ve already read. I added it to this list after reading the first chapter, and I finished the book before this post. It’s an excellently written page-turner, and I especially enjoyed the theme of letting go of toxic ideas engrained into one throughout childhood, no matter one’s age.
Blue skies, empty land—and enough wide-open space to hide a horrifying secret. A woman with a past, a mysterious trunk, a town on the edge of nowhere, and a bracing new vision of the American West, from the award-winning author of The Changeling.
”If the literary gods mixed together Haruki Murakami and Ralph Ellison, the result would be Victor LaValle.”—Anthony Doerr, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All the Light We Cannot See
Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear.
The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California in a hellfire rush and make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will become one of the “lone women” taking advantage of the government’s offer of free land for those who can tame it—except that Adelaide isn’t alone. And the secret she’s tried so desperately to lock away might be the only thing that will help her survive the harsh territory.
Crafted by a modern master of magical suspense, Lone Women blends shimmering prose, an unforgettable cast of adventurers who find horror and sisterhood in a brutal landscape, and a portrait of early-twentieth-century America like you’ve never seen. And at its heart is the gripping story of a woman desperate to bury her past—or redeem it.
Rose/House by Arkady Martine
Scheduled Release Date: March 30
Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire was one of my favorite books read in 2021, and I’m curious to see what she does with this novella coming from Subterranean Press. From reading the early reviews on Goodreads, it sounds like it raises some interesting questions related to the science fictional scenario of having AI houses.
Arkady Martine, the acclaimed author of the Teixcalaan Series, returns with an astonishing new novella.
Basit Deniau’s houses were haunted to begin with.
A house embedded with an artificial intelligence is a common thing: a house that is an artificial intelligence, infused in every load-bearing beam and fine marble tile with a thinking creature that is not human? That is something else altogether. But now Deniau’s been dead a year, and Rose House is locked up tight, as commanded by the architect’s will: all his possessions and files and sketches are confined in its archives, and their only keeper is Rose House itself. Rose House, and one other.
Dr. Selene Gisil, one of Deniau’s former protégé, is permitted to come into Rose House once a year. She alone may open Rose House’s vaults, look at drawings and art, talk with Rose House’s animating intelligence all she likes. Until this week, Dr. Gisil was the only person whom Rose House spoke to.
But even an animate intelligence that haunts a house has some failsafes common to all AIs. For instance: all AIs must report the presence of a dead body to the nearest law enforcement agency.
There is a dead person in Rose House. The house says so. It is not Basit Deniau, and it is not Dr. Gisil. It is someone else. Rose House, having completed its duty of care and informed Detective Maritza Smith of the China Lake police precinct that there is in fact a dead person inside it, dead of unnatural causes—has shut up.
No one can get inside Rose House, except Dr. Gisil. Dr. Gisil was not in North America when Rose House called the China Lake precinct. But someone did. And someone died there. And someone may be there still.
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
Read an Excerpt
Scheduled Release Date: April 11
I’ve been looking forward to this space opera novel since reading what the author and editor said about the protagonist in the announcement on Tor.com. In particular, I took notice when Emily Tesh said, “The villain of Kyr’s journey is Kyr herself.” And then I saw Ruoxi Chen said, “Kyr is a protagonist who is the absolute worst. I’d die for her of course.” Kyr sounds like just the type of messy, complex sort of character I enjoy reading about.
A thrillingly told queer space opera about the wreckage of war, the family you find, and who you must become when every choice is stripped from you, Some Desperate Glory is Astounding Award Winner and Crawford Award Finalist Emily Tesh’s highly anticipated debut novel.
“Masterful, audacious storytelling. Relentless, unsentimental, a completely wild ride.”—Tamsyn Muir
While we live, the enemy shall fear us.
Since she was born, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she readies herself to face the Wisdom, the powerful, reality-shaping weapon that gave the majoda their victory over humanity.
They are what’s left. They are what must survive. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. When Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to Nursery to bear sons until she dies trying, she knows she must take humanity’s revenge into her own hands.
Alongside her brother’s brilliant but seditious friend and a lonely, captive alien, Kyr escapes from everything she’s known into a universe far more complicated than she was taught and far more wondrous than she could have imagined.
(more…)
