Demons, Bog Wives, and Seven-Eyed Dragons: October’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books

As the leaves fall, your TBR grows ever taller—sorry not sorry, but October has an especially excellent lineup of new SFF. Fresh new fantasies stake their premises on blood rains and necromantic fossil fuels. A parallel universe London threatens to overshadow our own. The latest apocalypse is shockingly horny. Among these explorations and excavations into the uncanny (with a Good Omens riff for good measure), Jeff VanderMeer and Susanna Clarke are back with new adventures (or surprise sequel-prequels!) set in their dynamic worlds. The vibes, as they say, are immaculate.

Nghi Vo, City in Glass
(Tordotcom Publishing, October 1)

Nghi Vo is rapidly becoming one of those auto-read SFF authors—no matter the medium, her stunning prose makes you want to follow her into a story. Queer demonic Great Gatsby retelling? Interlinked fantasy novellas examining the multifaceted sides to how a great epic is told? Bonnie and Clyde (and a beguiling third partner-in-crime) on the fox roads in a taut novelette? All in. Her latest standalone novel sounds just as enticing: Vitrine, a demon, transforms the sleepy city of Azril into a hedonistic destination, only to watch in despair as angels raze it to the ground. Cursing one angel to be bound to her forever, Vitrine gains a constant (if maddening) companion as she sifts through Azril’s rubble and slowly reshapes it. Over many centuries, demon and angel come to better understand one another, and find a way to rebuild Azril into something even more dazzling than before.

Alan Moore, The Great When
(Bloomsbury Publishing, October 1)

Alan Moore (Watchmen, From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) has described this novel, the first in his Long London quintet, as “an elaborate excuse for me to excavate the city’s secret jewelry; the forgotten spaces, startling events, and fabulous neglected characters that are embedded in the place’s blazing and unlikely history, but which seldom, if at all, see literary daylight.” In post-World War II London, eighteen-year-old bookshop employee Dennis Knuckleyard stumbles upon the rarest of books: one that does not exist in our world, but instead was printed in the Great When. In this alternate London, literary figures are flesh-and-blood creations, but so too are concepts like Poetry (rad) and Crime (gulp). Like dipping in and out of an engrossing book, Dennis must find his way back to ordinary London without revealing the secret existence of the Great When, lest he himself get turned inside-out.

Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife
(Counterpoint, October 1)

This Appalachian gothic centers on the Haddesley family, bound to their cranberry bog by a supernatural pact: Every generation they sacrifice their patriarch, and in return the land offers forth a “bog-wife” to carry on the family line. But when the natural forces around them renege on the latest ritual, the estranged Haddesley siblings must reunite in order to figure out the family’s new way forward. Like any intriguing family drama, each sibling has their own motivations, from abandoning the pact entirely to focus on their own nuclear families to greedily procuring bog-wives for themselves. This sounds wonderfully atmospheric and eerie, with both sides not playing fair.

Sung-il Kim (translated by Anton Hur), Blood of the Old Kings
(Tor Books, October 8)

In this Korean epic fantasy, the Empire is powered by necromancy and dragon fire, but what happens when its two biggest sources of magic fight their destinies? Sorcerer-in-training Arienne bucks her teachings, with the help of a long-dead mage speaking in her head, while widowed swordswoman Loran will free the seven-eyed dragon chained inside a volcano, wielding nothing more than a dragon-fang blade. Their stories intertwine with that of another outsider: In the city, orphan Cain seeks to avenge her dead friend. In this English translation by Anton Hur, Sung-il Kim looks to subvert the “chosen one” archetype with three protagonists who must instead do the choosing.

CJ Leede, American Rapture
(Tor Nightfire, October 15)

The apocalypse is erotic in horror author CJ Leede’s (Maeve Fly) latest grisly tale about an infectious virus that leaves its victims sex-crazed and often violent in those desires. “Good Catholic girl” Sophie is shielded from this “rapture for sinners” by her restrictive parents… until the virus comes too close to home, and she must flee. Searching for her twin brother Noah, sent away long ago for his queer desires, Sophie must navigate a chaotic, pandemic-altered landscape while deciphering misinformation and unpacking her own traumatic shame and guilt.

S. Hati, And the Sky Bled
(Bindery Books, October 15)

This debut climate fantasy opens with an arresting image: the skies raining down bloody torrents of calor, a rare fossil fuel. Its existence has trapped the city of Tejomaya under occupation of those who would waste it to selfish ends… except that Tejomaya is six months into a drought, with calor reserves falling fast. An heiress, a slumlord, and a street-smart treasure hunter have conflicting motivations for finding a secret stash of calor, from curing a ravaging illness to freeing Tejomaya itself from oppression. And it turns out that they have a shared history by way of a devastating fire ten years before…

Susanna Clarke, The Wood at Midwinter
(Bloomsbury Publishing, October 22)

If you’ve reread Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and Piranesi so many times that you can recite them, then you’re sure to enjoy this short story. Set in the world of the former, it follows nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scot, who has a gift for talking to animals. While wandering the forest with her own dogs and a pig named Apple, she happens upon a blackbird and a fox—and then darkness falls, transforming the woods. The BBC originally released this story on its Short Works podcast, but if you’re more of a visual person, this new edition comes fully illustrated, allowing for two different ways to experience the enchantment.

Jeff VanderMeer, Absolution
(MCD, October 22)

If you never felt that you had enough closure at the end of the Southern Reach trilogy, surprise—author Jeff VanderMeer feels the same! A decade after the publication of Annihilation (adapted into an equally trippy film by Alex Garland), VanderMeer revisits the world of Area X in a collection of three new expeditions into this utterly transformed nightmare-scape—before it was even called Area X. Linking this triptych is the push-and-pull relationship between former spy Old Jim and his partner-turned-handler “Jack.” Expect the same human bureaucracy and alien confrontations, an unsettling yet compelling prequel to the events of Annihilation.

Hugh Howey (editor), The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024
(Mariner Books, October 22)

As a kid, I would get the Best American SFF anthology for Christmas every year, so I have that association with December, but I like the idea of it coming out a tad earlier. The only entry in this year’s collection that I’ve had the pleasure of reading so far is Isabel J. Kim’s “Zeta-Epsilon,” a heartwarming and -rending brother/sister story where both the SF worldbuilding and the emotions feel as vast as space itself. But I’m chuffed to see selections from Ann Leckie, Rebecca Roanhorse, Amal El-Mohtar, and James S.A. Corey; plus authors I wouldn’t have expected, like Andrew Sean Greer (Less). This seems a fitting choice for right when the days start to become shorter.