September’s Greatest Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books ‹ Literary Hub

Did anybody else blink and summer time is sort of over? I’m scripting this with a month left within the season, these bizarre weeks the place summer time camp has ended (why) however the nights nonetheless keep sunny for lengthy sufficient that you simply need to take benefit and keep out. September (which additionally occurs to be my birthday month) has an exquisite bounty of recent sci-fi, fantasy, and speculative works that includes woman knights, sapphic swordswomen, and intelligent retellings. It’s becoming that lots of this month’s books are novellas—the right size for relieving again into extra structured weeks and more and more darker nights.

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Okay.J. Parker, Making History
(Tordotcom Publishing, September 2)

In Okay.J. Parker’s newest satirical fantasy, Aelia’s despotic ruler Gyges wants a picture overhaul… so he imprisons the realm’s brightest minds to turn out to be his very personal royal thinktank. If they need to maintain their heads, these professors and linguists will retcon Gyges’ invasion, turning the tyrant right into a official philosopher-king. But when POWs excavating false burial websites uncover a Book of Kings, Gyges’ ersatz historians are shocked to find that the narrative matches every thing they’ve cooked up.

Naomi Novik, The Summer War
(Del Rey, September 16)

Like her different standalone novels Uprooted and Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik’s newest novella focuses on a younger girl coming into new energy whereas change simmers alongside a powerfully charged border between human and supernatural lands. Celia is the youngest youngster of Prosper’s Grand Duke Veris, who quells a century of tensions between his kingdom and the Summer Lands by means of some cunningly deliberate political marriages involving his offspring. But when her eldest brother Argent rejects his responsibility and leaves dwelling, fledgling witch Celia by accident curses him to a life with out love… and later finds herself married off to the king of the immortal summerlings. Desperate to repair her mistake, she groups up with Roric, their ignored center brother, to trace down Argent and maintain conflict from reigniting between people and summerlings.

William Alexander, Sunward
(Saga Press, September 16)

William Alexander’s grownup SF debut grew out of a brief story featured in The Sunday Morning Transport, about planetary courier Tova Lir and Agatha Panza von Sparkles, one in every of her child bot apprentices—functionally, her foster youngsters. When a job runs them afoul of a derelict ship, Agatha’s juvenile AI thoughts is left weak, and Tova should flip to her grown fosters for assist making certain Agatha has a future on this cozy SF story.

Martin Cahill, Audition for the Fox
(Tachyon Publications, September 16)

Nesi might have godly blood in her veins, however that doesn’t make her particular; she desperately wants the patronage of one of many Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven if she hopes to ever go away her dwelling of Oranoya and discover the world. Having been rejected by 96 members of the pantheon, she makes a last-ditch plea to T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks. But their audition catapults Nesi again in time 300 years, to the Occupation of Oranoya by the fascist Zeminis. In her current, the Occupation was overthrown; prior to now, she has to guarantee that historical past occurs the best way it’s speculated to.

Samantha Shannon, Among the Burning Flowers
(Bloomsbury Publishing, September 16)

The Priory of the Orange Tree established the Roots of Chaos cycle with its feminist retelling of Saint George and the Dragon, as a fire-breathing wyrm often called the Nameless One unleashed a draconic plague that reshaped how the East, West, and South regarded dragons. Standalone prequel A Day of Fallen Night went again in time 5 hundred years, and now Among the Burning Flowers tells the story of what occurred in-between. It’s a shorter learn in comparison with the opposite two however its personal entry level into the Roots of Chaos cycle, with a craving love story between an imprisoned princess and her betrothed, whereas a dragon-hunter seeks to cease a fire-breathing wyrm earlier than the land of Yscalin will be set ablaze.

V.L. Bovalino, The Second Death of Locke
(Forever, September 23)

Welcome to woman knight fall with this romantasy concerning the bloody, magical bonds between a mage and his knight. On the battlefield, Grey Flynn is Captain Kiernan Seward’s Hand, permitting him to attract from her nicely of energy to enact magic. But once they embark on a life-threatening mission to save lots of a toddler belonging to the enemy, Grey should reveal how dire the stakes actually are—that if she dies, all magic dies along with her.

Seamus Sullivan, Daedalus Is Dead
(Tordotcom Publishing, September 30)

You don’t need to be an knowledgeable in Greek mythology to know Icarus, the overambitious youth who flew too near the solar with artifical wings, hubris and warmth melting the wax holding him within the sky. But what of Daedalus, his poor father who watched his son plummet into the ocean? What of Daedalus, the architect who created the terrible labyrinth imprisoning each the Minotaur and his victims? In this darkish fantasy novella, the grieving father descends into Tartarus to try to reunite with Icarus, solely to seek out that King Minos’ labyrinth was a cakewalk in comparison with the infinite stretches of Hell that may by no means be mapped nor designed with out making its inhabitants go mad.

C.L. Clark, The Sovereign
(Orbit Books, September 30)

This would have been on my 2025 Most Anticipated SFF listing if not for ready on the discharge date, however what a deal with for it to be confirmed. Fantasy romance trilogy The Magic of the Lost barrels to its epic conclusion, following The Faithless’ one-two punch of the Withering plague returning to Balladaire and queen Luca asking soldier Touraine to be her basic and her spouse. (The approach I screamed on the finish of the second e-book…) These two don’t take a second to catch their breaths, so neither will we. A royal wedding ceremony?! (If Touraine says sure…!) That cowl! (Both of them in a single place, however in that pose?!) The Sovereign goes to seek out new methods to interrupt our hearts earlier than it’s over, I simply comprehend it.