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polishgenius, on 16 October 2026 - 09:52 PM, said:
Morgoth, on 15 October 2026 - 10:21 AM, said:
The Tainted Cup series by Jackson Bennet has been fantastic, and I am happily starting on China Mievilles latest, The Rouse. I do struggle to find new authors in the current market however. Romantasy - though undoubtedly a boon for the publishing industry - has not been at all convincing despite several attempts. And outside of that genre I can't seem to find a lot of new names.
There's loads of new non-romantasy stuff*, but to some extent you have to be willing to take a chance on algo recs via goodreads and (for me) Kobo, I've discovered. Started doing that a little while ago and it got me a bunch of good reads outside of the hype machine.
Also just regularly comb upcoming lists and reviews from outside the tik-tok-ish crowd. I got a bunch of good recs from a HelloFutureMe vid that'd never have crossed my path otherwise.
*well, there's loads of non-romantasy stuff that is also hyped and all over the bookstores, but it's mostly cozy fantasy, which I assume isn't what you mean.
Because I'm me, I'm just gonna throw in a few that I've caught in the last few years that may have gone under the radar around here:
Kalyna the Soothsayer: a terrific rogue of a main character who gets caught by her own desparate half-con and dragged into a big, dangerous, political situation. I've seen nobody mention it or the sequel, and even though they both stand alone as stories, I really do want them to get enough traction to get the rest.
The Warden, by Daniel M. Ford: there is both a romance and cozyness in it, but what it really is is a feel-good but old-school swords-and-sorcery adventure set around a frontier village.
The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan: to be fair, this got a massive publisher push, but since it hasn't broken through here and it's so good it deserves to, I'mma mention it here. It bears a little resemblance to The Devils, kinda, but in my opinion is quite a lot better. Genuinely brilliant.
A Song of Legends Lost by MH Ayinde. If you want really truly epic fantasy, African and African-diaspora writers and settings are a good place to look right now. Rogba Payne's Song of Godhunters series is my favourite, but this one is really good too, and has a few hints of Malazan about the scale and the way it unveils things. Definitely the most traditional-fantasy among this list (aside from maybe Kalina) in its style if not setting. eta: that's not true, The Warden definitely is. But aside from that.
The Girl With A Thousand Faces, by Sunyi Dean. Something completely different, as it's about a ghosthunter in Kowloon Walled City. This one did also get some amount of hype this year, but I discovered it via 'like this' on Kobo, so... I'm putting it here. It's bonkers, but really good.
The Secret Market of the Dead by Giovanni M. Feo. It's... um, mad? It's a kind of Italian-flavoured fairytale magic type book, but that doesn't do it justice.
I could go forever lol, but I felt the need to chuck a few out there just coz it makes me sad when people miss out on great fantasy and think the genre's dying just coz of the balkanisation of recommendation sources. It is harder to find stuff, but it is there.
You made me by a bunch of books, shame on you! And also thank you, my to read pile is embarrassingly puny as of late.
