Six More Fantasy Novels I Loved in the Past Year
- The Bossy Bookworm
- Mar 6
- 7 min read
Six More Favorite Fantasy Reads
This is the second of three fantasy-favorite lists I'll have for you as I mine my reading for the Bossy best of the best from the past year. You can find my first list of favorites from the past year here.
You can explore the twelve titles on My Very Favorite Bossy 2025 Reads to find out about my overall favorite reads from last year, or you can read about past Bossy fantasy favorites here.
If you've read any of these titles, I'd love to hear what you think!
What are some of your favorite fantasy reads, whether from the past year or beyond?
01 A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna
Mandanna's is a fun magical story featuring an oddball cast of characters, satisfying justice, love, chosen family, funny dialogue, and heartwarming moments.
Sera Swan was one of Britain's most powerful young witches. She showed so much promise, her skill threatened to overtake that of her belittling, greedy mentor. But she uses a forbidden spell to save the beloved aunt who raised her, and she is exiled from the magical Guild.
Sera returns home to her magically enhanced inn, run by her treasured aunt. Sera's former mentor is out in the world wreaking havoc, grasping at ever-increasing power, and frightening other witches into doing his bidding. Meanwhile, Sera realizes that a very old spell exists that could restore her powers. Then Luke Larsen, a handsome, grumpy magical historian, comes to stay at Jasmine and Sera's inn along with his neurodivergent young sister, and suddenly Sera and her messy, oddball chosen family are forced to reconsider their collective futures.
I loved Sera's discovery of her inner strength and her willingness to rewrite her future.
This is heartwarming and shies away from being too cute yet is consistently charming. The dialogue is lovely, and the oddball set of characters is nicely developed.
For my full review, please check out A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping.
02 Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School #1) by Gail Carriger
The first in the author's young adult steampunk Finishing School series offers wonderful, typically strong Carriger women with unique talents, clever minds, a nose for mystery, and next-level bantering capabilities.
Fourteen-year-old Sophronia Temminnick constantly tests her mother's patience, as she's more apt to occupy herself by dismantling a clock or to arrive to tea disheveled, having climbed a nearby tree to ponder life's mysteries, than she is to master the proper curtsy or perfect her needlework, as is becoming to a Victorian-era young lady.
So she is horrified to learn that she's been enrolled in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. But Sophronia soon realizes that the students at Mademoiselle Geraldine's aren't simply learning to dance and dress, but to use household items as weapons, use their feminine wiles to distract, and use diminishing assumptions about young women to craftily spy on unsuspecting victims.
Sophronia is an immensely likable, clever, quick study who defies societal expectations. I loved the steampunk aspects--the airship transport, steam-powered mechanical animals, and the mechanical robot servants within the alternate Victorian England setting.
For my full review, please check out Etiquette & Espionage. I loved the first book in Gail Carriger's five-book (plus a prequel short) Parasol Protectorate series, Soulless and its sequel, Changeless.
03 Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab
This wonderfully creepy lesbian vampire story is largely about female empowerment, but also about love, discovery, reinvention, and revenge. I loved each time period and the evolution of each strong female character.
Schwab's lesbian vampire tale spans centuries, beginning in 1532 Santo Domingo de la Calzada as a young woman named Maria makes choices to shield her from being a man's pawn and vessel for children until her death--then enters into a future she never could have imagined.
In 1827 London, naive young Charlotte lives a sheltered, lovely pastoral life, until an indiscretion results in her banishment to London society. There she encounters an intriguing widow with promises of freedom with deep repercussions.
And in 2019 Boston, Alice is trying to break out of her shell at college, and a one-night stand feels like a daring start. But the evening leaves her forever changed, and she's bent on finding answers--and revenge.
I loved that the women of each time insist upon creating situations in which they have autonomy and agency.
The storyline threading the three timelines together is deliciously intriguing, and a character that was initially a wilting flower finds her strength, her purpose, and her desire for vengeance, all of which is satisfying to witness.
For my full review please check out Bury My Bones in the Midnight Soil.
Schwab is also the author of The Fragile Threads of Power, Vengeful, and the wonderful Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, as well as the Shades of Magic series. (The first two books in that series are A Darker Shade of Magic and A Gathering of Shadows, each of which I gave four Bossy stars. You can check out my review of book 3, A Conjuring of Light, here.)
04 Silver Elite by Dani Francis
While I should probably stop reading "romantasy" because I prefer my fantasy and romance to remain separate, I was taken with the double-edged quest, elite training, magical abilities, and complex conflicts between classes in the first in this dystopian series.
In Dani Francis's dystopian novel, Wren Darlington is a Mod who has lived under the radar for her twentysomething years. A select few fellow members of the rebel Uprising are aware that she is psychic, but no one but her adoptive uncle is aware that she can, dangerously and inconsistently, incite--forcing others to do her bidding.
But one careless, heroic move by Wren draws the attention of the enemy, and the military forces her to enlist in a training program for Silver Block.
Wren attempts to sabotage her own success, but in order to aid the resistance she must excel and earn her way into Silver Elite, a small unit sure to access more sensitive information that could assist the rebels.
Francis explores issues of class and race through her characters' strongly held assumptions and prejudices surrounding Mods and Primes, and Wren's fierce loyalty to her kind is complicated by the secrets she's keeping about abilities that would make her even more feared, a deeper outcast, and a terrifyingly unknown quantity to both types of person in her world.
This is the first in a series and I'm really looking forward to reading the next installment.
For my full review please check out Silver Elite.
05 The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty
I loved the worldbuilding and the headstrong, powerful loose cannon of Nahri, as well as the Middle Eastern fantasy setting. I found myself yearning for the expert pacing, intrigue setup, and rich character development of my beloved Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by the same author.
Nahri makes a living on the streets of eighteenth-century Cairo, skillfully thieving and honing her skills as a con artist. The only thing that isn't a lie is her mysterious ability to instinctually, instantaneously heal others and herself.
During a con she accidentally summons a djinn warrior, Dara, and the two must flee across the desert to Daevabad, a magical city whose most powerful citizens rely on fire. But the city is split between two groups, those holding the throne and palace and those eking out a living on the streets. Centuries-old resentments and conflicts threaten to bubble up into war--and Nahri and Dara's arrival only serves to feed the flames of conflict.
I loved the headstrong, powerful but untrained main character Nahri, the complex cultural backgrounds clashing in the book, and the Middle Eastern-based, fantastical worldbuilding.
Chakraborty is also the author of the wonderful novel The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, the first in the series of the same name; she published that book under the name Shannon Chakraborty. I listed Amina in the Greedy Reading List Six Four-Star (and Up) Science Fiction and Fantasy Reads I Loved in the Past Year.
06 The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman
Grossman's reimagined Arthurian legend gives center stage to a ragtag band of misfits, celebrates diversity, and builds a patchwork of adventures, discovery, and widened horizons culminating in a satisfying new, reimagined path forward.
Collum is an instinctually gifted, strong knight who has literally fought for sword training as a lowly ward; his family has little use for him; and his heart is set upon joining King Arthur's court.
But when he finally makes his way to the Round Table, only elderly, impaired, has-been knights are left, and he learns that Arthur was killed weeks earlier. But Collum refuses to believe that a life as a knight is no longer possible for him. Along with Merlin's apprentice, Nimue, he becomes determined to usher in a new age, where Excalibur will be reclaimed, Camelot will be secure from would-be usurpers, and the kingdom will be inspired again by bravery and might.
I appreciated the epic length of the book (688 pages), in which each remaining knight gets page time and a recounting of key adventures. But the many points of view and meandering stories also felt a little broad at times, and I wished for more focus on Collum, while understanding that his early-days position didn't warrant the majority of the storytelling.
Grossman addresses issues of diversity in satisfying fashion; a transgender knight, a Muslim knight, and a gay knight are all represented. The full roster of knights--and the women who hold important roles in the tale--are all misfits who don't inspire great confidence, but collectively, they fight to find a path forward in a world that is changing around them.
I listened to The Bright Sword as an audiobook (it was twenty-three hours long).
Click here for my full review.
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