Fresh Voices, New Worlds: Iconic SFF Protagonists With Unconventional Perspectives

If there’s anyone you can count on to write a stunningly original fantasy that’ll leave you craving the next one immediately, it’s Robert Jackson Bennett. His newest series, the Ana and Din Mysteries, starts with The Tainted Cup, which follows an eccentric detective named Ana Dolabra, whose reputation for brilliance is preceded only by her several eccentricities, and her assistant Dinios Kol, who possesses a perfect memory which he uses to help with his dyslexia. 

When a high imperial officer lies dead, killed when a tree spontaneously bursts from his body, Din must act as Ana’s eyes and ears due to her insistence on wearing a blindfold at all times and her refusal to step outside the walls of her home. With Din’s skill for observation and his perfect memory along with Ana’s brilliant deductions, the pair must work together to untangle a web of mystery and murder that could endanger the world as they know it. 

This isn’t RBJ’s first foray into murder mysteries, but it still never fails to be impressive the way everything clicks together in the last act. The Tainted Cup delivers on all of its promises as a murder mystery set in a high fantasy setting, it does so while seamlessly fleshing out all of its worldbuilding, perfectly paving the way for its numerous sequels. 

When a person emigrates from one country to another, they leave behind a version of themselves in their homeland, an “instance” which thinks, breathes, and lives the life you’ve left behind. Many keep in touch with their instances, updating each other every day so as to keep both of their lives and experiences in tune with one another, but some instances never communicate at all. Soyoung Rose Kang left Korea at just ten years old and has been estranged from both her own and her mother’s instance ever since, but when her instance calls to inform Rose of her grandfather’s death, Rose must travel back to Korea for the funeral, completely unaware that Soyoung is hoping to reintegrate, whether Rose wants to or not.

Isabel J. Kim’s debut novel, Sublimation, is an expansion of one of my favorite short stories ever, “Homecoming is Just Another Word for the Sublimation of the Self.” Told through the second person point of view, Kim seamlessly integrates science fiction with deeply thought provoking commentary on identity and diaspora, complete with extensive worldbuilding that reimagines classic literature through the eyes of a world that can literally split a person in two. But are instances necessarily two halves of a whole, or are they just two halves? Kim’s novel is a favorite for those who dive headfirst into speculative sci-fi that centers the “what if’s” we’ve pondered deep into the night, immersive worldbuilding complete with exploitative big tech companies, and everything a hyphenated identity entails. 

The New War is over. Humans have finally defeated the robots and are recovering the central computer, Archos, that controlled the attack. What follows are all of the major recorded events that led up to the war… 

Told as a curation of the most important events found in Archos’ hard drive, Robopocalypse ranges from official interviews to events that security cameras caught in the city streets during Zero Hour. Wilson’s choice to tell the story through an epistolary format allows Robocopalypse to share only the best, most important scenes throughout the fall (and eventual union) of humanity. Additionally, Wilson knows what he’s writing about: with a Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, the science fiction seems almost too realistic, and Archos is depicted as powerful but not omnipotent. Its strengths and weaknesses are believable and its motives make sense. 

Interestingly, the one throughline the stories have is the introduction and commentary by Cormac Wallace, the protagonist who has gone through the trouble of curating the timeline in the book, specifically choosing stories where humanity’s strength overcomes all. In the end, it’s up to readers to decide whether or not Wallace’s curation can be fully trusted, making for a fun, layered read on a robot apocalypse. 

Meet Murderbot, our half-human, half-robot narrator who has hacked its “governor module” in order to go rogue and break free from its company commands. In theory, Murderbot acts as a Security Unit to a group of surveyors spacefaring on a remote planet. In practice, Murderbot isn’t really fond of humans and would much rather spend all of its time binging the 35,000 hours of movies, books, plays, music, and serials contained in the entertainment channels of the company satellites. However, when a neighboring space mission goes dark, it’s up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth. 

All Systems Red is the first volume in Martha Well’s The Murderbot Diaries series, which has recently been adapted into a TV series for AppleTV (Murderbot, 2025). Written as a novella, readers can easily finish All Systems Red in one sitting (we find it hard not to) and the plot takes off running, immediately plunging Murderbot and the team into multiple types of danger. Well’s characterization is one of the simply outstanding parts of the story: Murderbot’s unique point of view and characterization, his actions and his thoughts have stayed with readers long after they’ve turned the final page!

For centuries, the kingdom of Iraden has been protected by the god known as the Raven. He watched over his territory from a tower in the powerful port of Vastai, having his will enacted through the Raven’s Lease, a human ruler chosen by the god himself. Under the Raven’s protection, the city flourishes, but everything comes with a price, and this is no different and no less costly than you would expect: the magic is sustained by the blood sacrifice that every Lease must offer. 

Now, for the first time, the power of the Raven is weakening. An usurper has taken the throne and the kingdom is being tested by invaders who long for the prosperity that Vastai boasts. In this unrest arises Eolo, aide to Mawat, the true Lease, and in seeking to help Mawat reclaim his city, Eolo discovers that the Raven’s tower holds a secret. The tower’s foundations hide a secret history that has been waiting to reveal itself, and to set in motion a chain of events that could destroy Iraden forever.

Told in a mix of first- and second-person point of view through the perspective of another immortal god named Strength and Patience of the Hill, The Raven Tower offers a unique and entirely different kind of epic fantasy novel. Ann Leckie’s sweet, introspective musings on life and death, time and space will have you questioning whether or not she’s actually an archaic immortal disguised as a modern fantasy writer…

Over the course of one singular day, Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in an ordinary town, comes home to find that her husband has murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, Sanze, the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization’s bedrock for a millennium, collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a vengeance. And, worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries. It’s clear that without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, there will be war across the Stillness. Essun doesn’t care if the world falls apart around her. She’ll break it herself in order to save her daughter. 

Every book in the series has won a Hugo Award, for good reason: told in the second-person point of view and including vast and robust worldbuilding and great LGBTQ+ representation and strong female leads, Jemisin’s world will suck you right in and never let you go. 

The first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, Black Sun was inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, political intrigue, and forbidden magic. In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.

Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.

Roanhorse’s storytelling will carry you across space and time, setting you in an absolutely brilliant, vibrant fantasy with fascinating characters and colorful storytelling. If you’re new to Roanhorse’s writing and looking for something fun and riveting, this is the perfect pick. 

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future. Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.

Pit against the limitless of time and space and told through back-and-forth letters between two rival time-traveling agents, This is How You Lose the Time War is perhaps, the quintessential love story in SFF right now, perfect for our modern world full of online dating, long-distance messages, and love still flourishing. 

Being an intern at One Wizard sounds magical on the page, but in practice mostly means getting yelled at by senior mages and angry clients alike. And so, after receiving a frantic call from a young man who’s awoken to a talisman on his bedroom wall (and no memory of how it got there) Journeyman Wen jumps at the chance to escape call-center duty and actually help someone for once. But when it turns out the client has been possessed by a demon prince from Hell, the case ends up being more complicated than Wen could ever have anticipated. Worse still, it’s clear the prince is not interested in leaving.

Written in the second person point of view, If Found, Return to Hell is an oddly charming fantasy novella with interesting and diverse characters. This might be the perfect fit for you if you’ve ever worked a dead-end office job, love found-family tropes, desperately need a cozy-fantasy atmosphere, or a mix of all three!

Eleven-year-old Joe is an imaginative boy who doesn’t fit in at school. He’s a victim of bullies, his dad died overseas in the Iraq war, he suffers from Type 1 diabetes, and one fateful day, his condition causes him to believe he’s entered a vivid fantasy world in which he’s the lost savior. His desperate attempt to make it out of his bedroom transforms into an incredible, epic adventure through a bizarre landscape of submarine pirate dwarves, evil Hell Hounds, Lightning Lords and besieged castles. But is his quest really just an insulin deprived delirium, from which he can die if he doesn't take his meds, or something much bigger?

Joe the Barbarian is a fantasy comic written to fix the drought of stories about troubled children entering magical worlds. Move over Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland, Morrison has us covered with Joe the Barbarian. Perfect pick for those looking for a magical escape from the problems of the real world.