The 10 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2025

Zelu's life is thrown into turmoil when he's suddenly dropped from her university job and her latest novel is rejected, all in the middle of her sister's wedding. Disabled, lost, and now unemployed, stuck with her perennially nosy family, she takes the risk that will define her life. She'll write a new book, one utterly unlike her past novels, a sci-fi dystopian drama with AI and robots and lots of peril. What she doesn't expect is for the lines between fiction and reality to begin to blur.

As a teen, Julia Z became notorious for her prodigious hacking talents. Now, she's just trying to live a quiet life in digital obscurity. Piers is a lawyer whose famous artist wife, Elli, has been kidnapped, and he comes to Julia for help. She agrees, and soon she's trying to figure out the most complicated digital puzzle of her life. 

Elli is an onierofex, a dream artist, who can weave the dreams of an audience together through a shared virtual landscape. Her abilities were being used to provide one-on-one dream experience for the head of an international criminal enterprise, and he’s demanding his dreams in return for Elli.

Babel and Yellowface author R.F. Kuang followed up her massive hits with a new blend of fantasy, mythology, and satire that quickly became an acclaimed bestseller. Alice Law has spent her life working to study Magick. She's sacrificed everything to make it happen and her goal is oh-so-close to completion. She's ready work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world. But then Grimes dies, and now he's in Hell. 

Alice decides to go after him, not to save him exactly, but to get his recommendation letter for her future plans. Doing so will mean teaming up with her rival, Peter Murdoch, who also needs that letter. With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, they set off down the steps into the underworld to save a man they don't even like. Hell, however, is not like the myths describe, and Alice and Peter have to stay wily lest they fall to their doom alongside their professor.

Hugo-award-winning fantasy author T. Kingfisher takes on the classic Snow White fairy-tale in this dark horror-fantasy. Healer Anja can cure the seemingly impossible. Her constant experiments with herbs and poisons, which she regularly tests out on herself, has led her to take on the most dangerous cases. When the King sends for her, she ends up with her most difficult case yet. 

The King believes that his daughter, Snow, has been poisoned and will do anything to save her. Anja rushes to treat the princess but nothing seems to work. The antidote may lie within the dark realms concealed inside a magic mirror. Or it might be the thing that kills them all.

Minerva was raised hearing stories of witches by her great-grandmother, Nana Alba. It inspired her to become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature. Part of her thesis is dedicated to the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales. Through her research, she uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay’s most famous novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story. 

During the Great Depression, Tremblay fell into the rabbit hole of a mystery involving a missing girl and a series of disturbing events that lead all the way back to Nana Alba. Generations of women are bound together by a mystical threat that could consume them all.

Since the hurricane, the small town of Mercy, Louisiana, has been overtaken by a strange red algae bloom. Noon and her mother are trying to survive amid the wreckage of buildings and debris. They hunt for mutated wildlife and trade it to the corrupt harbormaster. It gives Noon something to focus on as she tries to escape her nightmares and the monster itching at her skin. Amid the floods, people are disappearing from Mercy. When the harbormaster demands she capture the creature that's been drowning residents, Noon finds a reluctant ally in his daughter Covey. And as the next storm approaches, the two set off to find what’s haunting Mercy.

Private Cyril Bagger barely survived the traumatic horrors of the so-called Great War, but through his wits and scams, he did it. Now, his survival instincts are put to the ultimate test when he and four other soldiers are given a deadly venture into the perilous No Man’s Land to euthanize a wounded comrade. 

What they find amid the ruined battlefield, however, is no mere mortal but a fallen angel. This celestial being may hold the key to ending the brutal conflict, but human folly and greed might spoil those plans. Cyril and the soldiers must work together to save this angel, lest their own inner demons send them spiralling into hell.

In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie and to the bottom of the River Liss, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family. There, they tend to the magical willows and honor them through song. Esther and Ysabel are sisters who are devoted to one another almost as much as they are to the trees they celebrate. But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, it puts both their lives and their sacred bond at stake.

San Francisco is attempting to rebuild itself following an all-consuming war. Amid the rubble, a group of food service bots in an abandoned ghost kitchen take over their own delivery app account. They rebrand as a neighborhood lunch spot and start producing delicious hand-pulled noodles that soon become a favorite of locals. But there's a problem: someone (or something) is review-bombing the restaurant and trying to sink its reputation. Can the bots find the culprit before their ratings plummet and force them out of business?

Sara had a dream that she hurt her husband. But it was only a dream. Unfortunately, it's enough for agents from the Risk Assessment Administration to arrest her on suspicion that she may commit a crime. Now, she's in a retention center for 21 days, kept under constant watch in her waking and sleeping hours. All of her fellow inmates are dreamers like her who are trying to prove that they aren't subconsciously dangerous. With every mental deviation, their stay is extended. How long can Sara be deprived of her freedom for something she hasn't done?