Fantasy Book Club
What a year it was for our fantasy book club! We held our last meeting (we take a break in December and only meet every six weeks) and not only did we end on one of our best discussion of the year, we had a fantastic time reminiscing on this year's reads and ranking our favorites! Keep reading to see our rankings and thoughts on each book we read this year. Our first pick for 2026 will be announced the first week of January!
2025 Fantasy Book Club Reads Ranked
When Osric Mordaunt, member of the Fyren Order of assassins, falls ill, he realizes he needs the expertise of a very specific healer. As fate would have it,that healer belongs to an enemy faction, the Haelan Order.
Aurienne Fairhrim and her fellow Haelan are inundated by sick children sufferingfrom an outbreak of a long-forgotten Pox. Unable to get the funding needed tolaunch an immunization program, the Haelan Order is desperate for money – sodesperate that when Osric breaks into their headquarters to bribe Aurienne toheal him, she is forced to accept.
As Osric and Aurienne work together to solve not only his illness but themysterious reoccurrence of the Pox, they find themselves ardently denying theirattraction which only fuels the tension between them.
On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see only a cosy ramen restaurant. And just the chosen ones—those who are lost—will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets.
Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as its new owner to find the pawnshop ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike other customers. For he offers help, instead of seeking it.
Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice—through rain puddles, hitching rides on paper cranes, across the bridge between midnight and morning and through a night market in the clouds.
But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own—and risk making a choice she will never be able to take back.
ABOUT THE BOOK
A brand-new epic fantasy from New York Times bestselling author Joe Abercrombie, featuring a notorious band of anti-heroes on a delightfully bloody and raucous journey
Holy work sometimes requires unholy deeds.
Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Sacred City, where he is certain a commendation and grand holy assignment awaits him. But his new flock is made up of unrepentant murderers, practitioners of ghastly magic, and outright monsters. The mission he is tasked with will require bloody measures from them all in order to achieve its righteous ends.
Elves lurk at our borders and hunger for our flesh, while greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions and comfort. With a hellish journey before him, it's a good thing Brother Diaz has the devils on his side.
The first woman ever admitted to a prestigious order of mages unravels a secret conspiracy that could change the practice of magic forever in this “provocative stand-alone novel [that] deftly incorporates elements of scienceand philosophy into dark academia” (The Washington Post), from the author of The Sword of Kaigen.
For twenty years, Sciona has devoted every waking moment to the study of magic, fueled by a mad desire to achieve the impossible: to become the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry at the University of Magics and Industry.
When Sciona finally achieves her ambition and becomes a highmage, she finds her challenges have just begun. Her new colleagues are determined to make her feel unwelcome—and, instead of a qualified lab assistant, they give her a janitor.
What neither Sciona nor her peers realize is that her taciturn assistant was not always a janitor. Ten years ago, he was a nomadic hunter who lost his family on their perilous journey from the wild plains to the city. But now he sees the opportunity to understand the forces that decimated his tribe, drove him from his homeland, and keep the privileged in power.
At first, mage and outsider have a fractious relationship. But working together, they uncover an ancient secret that could change the course of magic forever—if it doesn’t get them killed first.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Dante’s Inferno meets Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul—perhaps at the cost of their own.
Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek:
The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld
Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world.
That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.
Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams….
Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the very same conclusion.
With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across Hell to save a man they don’t even like.
But Hell is not like the storybooks say, Magick isn’t always the answer, and there’s something in Alice and Peter’s past that could forge them into the perfect allies…or lead to their doom.
ABOUT THE BOOK
From NYT bestselling author Rachel Gillig comes the next big romantasy sensation, a gothic, mist-cloaked tale of a young prophetess forced on an impossible quest with the one knight whose future is beyond her sight. Perfect for fans of Jennifer L. Armentrout and Leigh Bardugo.
Sybil Delling has spent nine years dreaming of having no dreams at all. Like the other foundling girls who traded a decade of service for a home in the great cathedral, Sybil is a Diviner. In her dreams she receives visions from six unearthly figures known as Omens. From them, she can predict terrible things before they occur, and lords and common folk alike travel across the kingdom of Traum’s windswept moors to learn their futures by her dreams.
Just as she and her sister Diviners near the end of their service, a mysterious knight arrives at the cathedral. Rude, heretical, and devilishly handsome, the knight Rodrick has no respect for Sybil's visions. But when Sybil's fellow Diviners begin to vanish one by one, she has no choice but to seek his help in finding them. For the world outside the cathedral’s cloister is wrought with peril. Only the gods have the answers she is seeking, and as much as she'd rather avoid Rodrick's dark eyes and sharp tongue, only a heretic can defeat a god.