No matter which types of fantasy books spark your imagination, the best fantasy books of May 2024 have it covered!
This month’s stellar lineup is a genre-bending, unforgettable collection of new titles from talented authors. Check out genre crossovers from Andrea Hairston, Kaliane Bradley, and Sara Wolf. Explore mythology with Vaishnavi Patel, or follow a swashbuckling heist from Mai Cortland. And that’s just the beginning!
Get your wishlists ready to go — here are the best fantasy books of May 2024.
Archangels of Funk by Andrea Hairston
Release date: May 7
Read it if: You love speculative fiction, dystopias, and imaginative world-building. In a dystopian future resulting from the “Water Wars,” a woman seeks a way to bridge the gap between honoring the past and build a new future.
Publisher’s synopsis: The Water Wars have scrambled the world. Flood refugees are on the run. Disruptors and the nostalgia militia roam the roads wreaking havoc. Invisible Darknet Lords troll the internet solidifying their power, while Cinnamon her three Circus-Bots, and two dogs, work with a community of Farmers, Motor Fairies and Wheel-Wizards to provide housing, healthcare and education for flood refugees.
Slipping into periodic despair, Cinnamon’s been hiding out. She’s ready to ditch the Next World Festival she runs―a sci-fi carnival jam featuring music, dance, masked revelers, drum circles and storytellers in a grassy amphitheatre on the farm she inherited. Her elders haunt her, insisting she do the Festival no matter what.
As she confronts threats from the Darknet Lords and the nostalgia militia, Cinnamon must determine how best to honor her elders and her history, while building a future for herself and her charges.
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
Blood at the Root by LaDarrion Williams
Release date: May 7
Read it if: You’d like to see a HBCU twist on the classic “school for magic” trope. A teenage boy discovers his connection to a magical college, only to discover that his new community has its own feuds and dangers to navigate.
Publisher’s synopsis: Ten years ago, Malik’s life changed forever the night his mother mysteriously vanished and he discovered he had uncontrollable powers. Since then, he has kept his abilities hidden, looking out for himself and his younger foster brother, Taye. Now, at 17, Malik is finally ready to start a new life for both of them, far from the trauma of his past. However, a daring act to rescue Taye reveals an unexpected connection with his long-lost grandmother: a legendary conjurer with ties to a hidden magical university that Malik’s mother attended.
At Caiman University, Malik’s eyes are opened to a future he never could have envisioned for himself— one that includes the reappearance of his first love, Alexis. His search for answers about his heritage, his powers, and what really happened to his mother exposes the cracks in their magical community as it faces a reawakened evil dating back to the Haitian Revolution. Together with Alexis, Malik discovers a lot beneath the surface at Caiman: feuding covens and magical politics, forbidden knowledge and buried mysteries.
In a wholly unique saga of family, history and community, Malik must embrace his legacy to save what’s left of his old family as well as his new one.
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
Five Broken Blades by Mai Cortland
Release date: May 7
Read it if: You’re still mad the Six of Crows spin-off never happened, or you love multiple POVs. In the kingdom of Yusan, a mismatched group of would-be assassins join together to kill the tyrannical king. They all seek their own rewards (or revenge), but the secrets they keep could doom the mission.
Publisher’s synopsis: The king of Yusan must die.
The five most dangerous liars in the land have been mysteriously summoned to work together for a single objective: to kill the god king Joon.
He has it coming. Under his merciless immortal hand, the nobles flourish, while the poor and innocent are imprisoned, ruined…or sold.
And now each of the five blades will come for him. Each has tasted bitterness―from the hired hit man seeking atonement, a lovely assassin who seeks freedom, or even the prince banished for his cruel crimes. None can resist the sweet, icy lure of vengeance.
They can agree on murder. They can agree on treachery.
But for these five killers―each versed in deception, lies, and betrayal―it’s not enough to forge an alliance. To survive, they’ll have to find a way to trust each other…but only one can take the crown.
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
Release date: May 7
Read it if: You’re a sucker for a good time-travel romance. A government agent hosts an “expat” from the 1800s for a study on time travel. As the pair grow closer, they learn the truth about the project, and history (and the future) may never be the same.
Publisher’s synopsis: In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.
She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.
Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
The Honey Witch by Sydney J. Shields
Release date: May 14
Read it if: You prefer your fantasy romance cozy, rather than world-shattering. Marigold gladly takes on the mantle of the Honey Witch rather than put up with society. The only catch? The Honey Witch can never fall in love — and Marigold, much to her surprise, begins to fall.
Publisher’s synopsis: Twenty-one-year-old Marigold Claude has always preferred the company of the spirits of the meadow to any of the suitors who’ve tried to woo her. So when her grandmother whisks her away to the family cottage on the tiny Isle of Innisfree with an offer to train her as the next Honey Witch, she accepts immediately. But her newfound magic and independence come with a price: No one can fall in love with the Honey Witch.
When Lottie Burke, a notoriously grumpy skeptic who doesn’t believe in magic, shows up on her doorstep, Marigold can’t resist the challenge to prove to her that magic is real. But soon, Marigold begins to care for Lottie in ways she never expected. And when darker magic awakens and threatens to destroy her home, she must fight for much more than her new home—at the risk of losing her magic and her heart.
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons by Peter S. Beagle
Release date: May 14
Read it if: You love classic fantasy with a whimsical twist. A young man inherits his father’s job as a dragon catcher, but he feels a kinship with the creatures instead. And besides, he’d much rather achieve his dream of becoming valet to the prince!
Publisher’s synopsis: Dragons are common in the backwater kingdom of Bellemontagne, coming in sizes from mouse-like vermin all the way up to castle-smashing monsters. Gaius Aurelius Constantine Heliogabalus Thrax (who would much rather people call him Robert) has recently inherited his deceased dad’s job as a dragon catcher/exterminator, a career he detests with all his heart in part because he likes dragons, feeling a kinship with them, but mainly because his dream has always been the impossible one of transcending his humble origin to someday become a prince’s valet. Needless to say, fate has something rather different in mind…
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
The Amethyst Kingdom by A.K. Mulford
Release date: May 14
Read it if: You love romantasy in its purest, most epic form. A five-book series wraps with a story of exes meeting again during a competition for the throne.
Publisher’s synopsis:
Carys Hilgaard has grown tremendously through her years; no longer is she the vapid, prejudicial fae who drowned herself in wine. At least, she wants to believe that’s true. Training has kept her balanced and open-minded—traits of a promising ruler. So, when the time comes for the Eastern Court trials to commence, her mind is set on one objective: win the crown and become the people’s queen. If she doesn’t, it puts the only family she has left—her halfling sister, Morgan, and her niece and two nephews—in danger.
But the gods have different plans. Lord Ersan Almah, her ex-boyfriend and fated mate, has entered the competition, vying for the kingdom himself—and hoping it’s enough to cure his heart after losing Carys. To make matters worse, Adisa Monroe, a devious witch, searches for mind-controlling amethyst seeds and plans to attack the Eastern Court on the night of the full moon, jeopardizing the entire kingdom of Okrith.
When incandescent hearts rekindle for a second chance at destined love, Carys must learn to let her lingering past go in order to protect her kingdom, the people she cares for, and fight for hope…if not, everything could collapse into ashes.
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
Heavenbreaker by Sara Wolf
Release date: May 21
Read it if: You appreciate genre mash-ups and morally questionable characters. The illegitimate daughter of a noble house enters a jousting tournament in a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid world. For each win she notches, a mysterious ally will kill one of the people responsible for her mother’s death.
Publisher’s synopsis: The duke of the powerful House Hauteclare is the first to die. With my dagger in his back.
He didn’t see it coming. Didn’t anticipate the bastard daughter who was supposed to die with her mother―on his order. He should have left us with the rest of the Station’s starving, commoner rubbish.
Now there’s nothing left. Just icy-white rage and a need to make House Hauteclare pay. Every damn one of them. Even if it means riding Heavenbreaker―one of the few enormous machines left over from the War―and jousting against the fiercest nobles in the system.
Each win means another one of my enemies dies. And here, in the cold terror of space, the machine and I move as one, intent on destroying each adversary―even if it’s someone I care about. Even if it’s someone I’m falling for.
Only I’m not alone. Not anymore.
Because there’s something in the machine with me. Something horrifying. Something…more.
And it won’t be stopped.
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
Goddess of the River by Vaishnavi Patel
Release date: May 21
Read it if: You love feminist retellings of classic mythology. Ganga, the Hindu river goddess of the Mahabharata, journeys through an epic of her own. As she strives to take back some of her freedom, her fate — and her son’s — looms large.
Publisher’s synopsis: Ganga, joyful goddess of the river, serves as caretaker to the mischievous godlings who roam her banks. But when their antics incur the wrath of a powerful sage, Ganga is cursed to become mortal, bound to her human form until she fulfills the obligations of the curse.
Though she knows nothing of mortal life, Ganga weds King Shantanu and becomes a queen, determined to regain her freedom no matter the cost. But in a cruel turn of fate, just as she is freed of her binding, she is forced to leave her infant son behind.
Her son, prince Devavrata, unwittingly carries the legacy of Ganga’s curse. And when he makes an oath that he will never claim his father’s throne, he sets in motion a chain of events that will end in a terrible and tragic war.
As the years unfold, Ganga and Devavrata are drawn together again and again, each confluence another step on a path that has been written in the stars, in this deeply moving and masterful tale of duty, destiny, and the unwavering bond between mother and son.
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
