Want a break from the real world? The best fantasy books of February 2025 are here to help! This month’s most exciting fantasy books offer the perfect blend of of escapism, heroism, and adventure.
Feeling epic? Try new releases from Kamilah Cole, Saara El-Arifi, or Samantha Shannon. In the mood for something cozier and more romantic? Heather Fawcett and Stephanie Burgis have it covered! There’s plenty of magic to be found, so check out all of the best fantasy books of February 2025 below.
This Ends in Embers by Kamilah Cole
Release date: Feb. 4
Read it if: You like rich world-building and epic fantasy stories with deeply personal stakes. Two sisters find themselves on opposite sides of a battle for their beloved country.
Publisher’s synopsis: Faron Vincent was once the saint of San Irie. Now, she’s done the unthinkable: betrayed her country. Alone, disgraced, and kidnapped, Faron is forced to help Iya grow his bloody empire. With her soul bonded to a ruthless killer, Faron has become an enemy to her people… and she fears they might be right.
Elara Vincent—the new Empyrean—must undo the damage her sister has caused. San Irie has been brought back to the brink of war as Iya proclaims no nation will be safe from his brutal invasion. But how can Elara save her sister, her best friend, her country, and her world when she’s already cracking under the pressure?
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
Grave Empire by Richard Swan
Release date: Feb. 4
Read it if: Your tastes for the best fantasy books of February 2025 run towards steampunk fantasy. A fast-growing empire seeks answers to avert an apocalyptic prophecy.
Publisher’s synopsis: Blood once turned the wheels of empire. Now it is money.
A new age of exploration and innovation has dawned, and the Empire of the Wolf stands to take its place as the foremost power in the known world. Glory and riches await.
But dark days are coming. A mysterious plague has broken out in the pagan kingdoms to the north. In the south, the Empire’s proxy war in the lands of the wolfmen is weeks away from total collapse.
Worse still is the message brought to the Empress by two heretic monks, who claim to have lost contact with the spirits of the afterlife. The monks believe this is the start of an ancient prophecy heralding the end of days—the Great Silence.
It falls to Renata Rainer, a low-ranking ambassador to an enigmatic and vicious race of mermen, to seek answers from those who still practice the arcane arts. But with the road south beset by war and the Empire on the brink of supernatural catastrophe, soon there may not be a world left to save…
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett
Release date: Feb. 11
Read it if: You prefer light academia and cozy fantasy over darker, epic tales. A pair of former academic rivals take over a fae throne, only to immediately find themselves facing a spiteful curse.
Publisher’s synopsis: Emily Wilde has spent her life studying faeries. A renowned dryadologist, she has documented hundreds of species of Folk in her Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Now she is about to embark on her most dangerous academic project yet: studying the inner workings of a faerie realm—as its queen.
Along with her former academic rival—now fiancé—the dashing and mercurial Wendell Bambleby, Emily is immediately thrust into the deadly intrigues of Faerie as the two of them seize the throne of Wendell’s long-lost kingdom, which Emily finds a beautiful nightmare filled with scholarly treasures.
Emily has been obsessed with faerie stories her entire life, but at first she feels as ill-suited to Faerie as she did to the mortal world. How can an unassuming scholar such as herself pass for a queen? Yet there is little time to settle in. Wendell’s murderous stepmother has placed a deadly curse upon the land before vanishing without a trace. It will take all of Wendell’s magic—and Emily’s knowledge of stories—to unravel the mystery before they lose everything they hold dear.
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
The Crimson Road by A.G. Slatter
Release date: Feb. 11
Read it if: You’d like a good gothic fantasy among your best fantasy books of February 2025. A young assassin must make a dark journey after her father’s death.
Publisher’s synopsis: Violet Zennor has had a peculiar upbringing. Training as a fighter in underground arenas, honing her skills against the worst scum, murderers and thieves her father could pit her against, she has learned to be ruthless. To kill.
Until the day Hedrek Zennor dies. Violet thinks she’s free – then she learns that her father planned to send her into the Darklands, where the Leech Lords reign. Where Violet’s still-born brother was taken years ago. Violet steadfastly refuses. Until one night two assassins attempt to slaughter her – and it becomes clear: she’s going to have to clean up the mess her father made.
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie Burgis
Release date: Feb. 18
Read it if: You’re in the mood for female-centric, gaslamp-vibe, romance-tinged fantasy. In a world ruled by three allied queens, a sorceress-turned-ruler falls for a wizard with a secret.
Publisher’s synopsis: Queen Saskia is the wicked sorceress everyone fears. After successfully wrestling the throne from her evil uncle, she only wants one thing: to keep her people safe from the empire next door. For that, she needs to spend more time in her laboratory experimenting with her spells. She definitely doesn’t have time to bring order to her chaotic library of magic.
When a mysterious dark wizard arrives at her castle, Saskia hires him as her new librarian on the spot. “Fabian” is sweet and a little nerdy, and his requests seem a little strange – what in the name of Divine Elva is a fountain pen? – but he’s getting the job done. And if he writes her flirtatious poetry and his innocent touch makes her skin singe, well…
Little does Saskia know that the “wizard” she’s falling for is actually an Imperial archduke in disguise, with no magical training whatsoever. On the run, with perilous secrets on his trail and a fast growing yearning for the wicked sorceress, he’s in danger from her enemies and her newfound allies, too. When his identity is finally revealed, will their love save or doom each other?
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
The Forest King’s Daughter by Elly Blake
Release date: Feb. 11
Read it if: You want a hint of mythology references in the best fantasy books of February 2025. A forest king’s daughter sparks a war when she befriends a boy from the underground.
Publisher’s synopsis: Once upon a time, among the bloodred trees of Thirstwood, a young forest princess became friends with a lonely boy from underground. He gifted her an amber ring, a worthless trinket—or so he thought—because no sooner did he slide it onto her finger than the queen of the underground and the forest king declared war.
Years later, Cassia is a crucial force in her father’s army, wielding her ring of light that can blind and disorient hundreds of enemies at a time. Then battle-hardened Zeru abducts her, planning to steal the ring back to fix his costly childhood mistake. Exhausted, terrified, and more than a little mistrusting, Cassia is forced to travel with Zeru to a place they both believed only existed in storybooks, one where their childhood friendship slowly rekindles into something much more. But it’s only a matter of time before the war they’ve escaped comes for them, and a hidden threat to forest and underground folk alike grows in the shadows.
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
The Antlered King by Marianne Gordon
Release date: Feb. 18
Read it if: You want the best fantasy books of February 2025 to include twisty magical court politics. In this sequel, a princess and a necromancer struggle with the dark bargains they’ve made.
Publisher’s synopsis: Hellevir’s gift to raise the dead once thrust her into the center of a court filled with backstabbing and treason, where she became duty bound to protect Princess Sullivain, the sole heir to the kingdom’s throne and target of many rivals eager for the crown. But the more Hellevir risked to keep Sullivain alive, and the more deeply she fell in love with the princess, the greater the cost became—for Hellevir’s power can only be granted by the strange figure who rules the afterlife, and there is always a price to pay.
Now Hellevir may have risked too much, and Sullivain has become obsessed with consolidating power to vanquish her foes once and for all—by whatever means necessary. Cast out to the fringes of a country on the verge of civil war, Hellevir is torn between protecting her heart or giving what little she has left to finish what she started. Yet, her connection with Sullivain runs deeper than the mortal world, and saving her friends and family might mean risking the woman she is still bound to by soul and blood.
To stop a war, Hellevir must unravel the last of Death’s riddles and decide, once and for all, who deserves to live, what a life is worth, and whether she can pay the price.
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
Upon a Starlit Tide by Kell Woods
Release date: Feb. 18
Read it if: The Little Mermaid is your favorite fairy tale (or Disney movie). A shipowner’s misfit daughter rescues a stranger from drowning, only to be swept into a dangerous and magical world.
Publisher’s synopsis: Saint-Malo, Brittany, 1758. To Lucinde Leon, the youngest daughter of a wealthy French shipowner, the high walls of Saint-Malo are more hindrance than haven.
While her sisters are busy trying to secure advantageous marriages, Luce spends her days secretly being taught to sail by Samuel, her best friend―and an English smuggler. Only he understands how the waves call to her. Then one stormy morning, Luce rescues a drowning man from the sea.
Immediately drawn in by the stranger’s charm, Luce is plunged into a world of glittering balls and faerie magic, seduction and brutality. Secrets that have long been lost in the shadowy depths of the ocean begin to rise to the surface, but as Luce wrestles with warring desires, she finds that her own power is growing brighter and brighter, shining like a sea-glass slipper. Or the scales of a sea-maid’s tail.
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
Cursebound by Saara El-Arifi
Release date: Feb. 18
Read it if: Your best fantasy books of February 2025 wouldn’t be complete without some messy fae politics (and romance). Two elven sisters struggle to break a curse without losing everything they care about.
Publisher’s synopsis: United by war. Betrayed by destiny. Cursed by love.
Yeeran was born for war but is unprepared for love. She has left her new lover, the Queen of the fae, to return to her homeland, only to find that her former lover now threatens war against the fae.
Left behind, her sister Lettle is determined to break the curse that binds the fae to their realm. When a stranger appears in the city, Lettle is convinced he’s the key. But the Fates that once spoke to her have fallen silent.
Can Lettle and Yeeran discover the secret behind the curse—and unite these two worlds before they destroy each other?
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
The Otherwhere Post by Emily J. Taylor
Release date: Feb. 25
Read it if: You like magical mysteries… and perhaps believe that words, themselves, are magical. An orphaned girl apprenticies with an enchanted writers’ guild to uncover the truth about her late father.
Publisher’s synopsis: Seven years ago, Maeve Abenthy lost everything: her world, her father, even her name. Desperate to escape the stain of her father’s crimes, she lives under a fake name, never staying in one place long enough to put down roots.
Then she receives a mysterious letter with four impossible words: Your father was innocent.
To uncover the truth, she poses as an apprentice for the Otherwhere Post, where she’ll be trained in the art of scriptomancy—the dangerous magic that allows couriers to enchant letters and deliver them to other worlds. But looking into her father’s past draws more attention than she’d planned.
Her secretive, infuriatingly handsome mentor knows she’s lying about her identity, and time is running out to convince him to trust her. Worse, she begins to receive threatening letters, warning her to drop her investigation—or else. For Maeve to unravel the mystery of what happened seven years ago, she may have to forfeit her life.
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
The Dark Mirror by Samantha Shannon
Release date: Feb. 25
Read it if: You’re excited to see this beloved author among the best fantasy books of February 2025! A young woman tries to recover missing memories amidst a sinister operation that could change the world.
Publisher’s synopsis: Everything is about to change.
Paige Mahoney is outside the Republic of Scion for the first time in more than a decade-but she has no idea how she got to the free world. Half a year has been wiped from her memory.
Her journey back to the revolution soon takes her to Venice, where the Domino Programme has uncovered evidence of a secret Scion plan. Before Paige can return to London, she must help the network unravel the sinister Operation Ventriloquist, which threatens to bring Europe to its knees in weeks.
And it soon becomes clear that the one person who could recover her memories-Arcturus Mesarthim-might also hold the key to thwarting Scion, allowing the revolution to strike an unprecedented blow . . .
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
Greenteeth by Molly O’Neill
Release date: Feb. 25
Read it if: You like folklore, cozy monsters, and unexpected alliances. A witch and a lake monster team up against a force threatening the village and all of Britain.
Publisher’s synopsis: Beneath the still surface of a lake lurks a monster with needle sharp teeth. Hungry and ready to pounce.
Jenny Greenteeth has never spoken to a human before, but when a witch is thrown into her lake, something makes Jenny decide she’s worth saving. Temperance doesn’t know why her village has suddenly turned against her, only that it has something to do with the malevolent new pastor.
Though they have nothing in common, these two must band together on a magical quest to defeat the evil that threatens Jenny’s lake and Temperance’s family, as well as the very soul of Britain.
Get it on Amazon or support your local bookstores through Bookshop.org.
