Ready for a most magical month of May? The best fantasy books of May 2025 will take you under the sea, into the skies, and through alternate worlds. You won’t want to miss highly-anticipated sequels from Sylvie Cathrall, G. R. Macallister, Danielle L. Jensen, and others. Plus, authors like Rachel Gillig and Tochi Onyebuchi are introducing us to new characters and exciting new worlds.
Fill your month of May with enchantment — check out all of the best fantasy books of May 2025 below!
A Letter from the Lonesome Shore by Sylvie Cathrall
Release date: May 6
Read it if: You’d like a cozy, underwater fantasy among the best fantasy books of May 2025. Two former pen pals explore a strange new world, while their siblings search for them.
Publisher’s synopsis: Former correspondents E. and Henerey, accustomed to loving each other from afar, did not anticipate continuing their courtship in an enigmatic underwater city. When their journey through the Structure in E.’s garden strands them in a peculiar society preoccupied with the pleasures and perils of knowledge, E. and Henerey come to accept—and, more surprisingly still, embrace—the fact that they may never return home.
A year and a half later, Sophy and Vyerin finally discover one of the elusive Entries that will help them seek their siblings. As the group’s efforts bring them closer to E. and Henerey, an ancient, cosmic threat also draws near…
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Shield of Sparrows by Devney Perry
Release date: May 6
Read it if: You like tales of princesses, monsters, and ancient deals. Forced to marry to fulfill an ancient treaty, a sheltered princess journeys to a dangerous land.
Publisher’s synopsis: Long ago, the gods unleashed monsters upon the five kingdoms of Calandra to remind us that humans are insignificant―that we must pray to the gods for mercy throughout our fragile, fleeting lives.
I didn’t need a deity to remind me I was powerless. Being a princess had never been more than a performance―twenty-three years of empty titles and hollow traditions. My sister revels in the spectacle, basking in the attention and flawlessly playing her part. I was never asked to be part of the charade.
Until the day an infamous monster hunter sailed to our shores. The day a prince walked into my father’s throne room and ruined my life. The day I married a stranger, signed a magical treaty in blood, and set off across the continent to the most treacherous kingdom in all the realm.
That was the day I learned that not all myths are make-believe. That lies and legends are often the same. And that the only way to kill the monsters we fear was to become one…
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Silver Elite by Dani Francis
Release date: May 6
Read it if: You’re hoping for some old-school dystopian fantasy in the best fantasy books of May 2025. A psychic woman tries to take down the enemy from within when she unwillingly enters their academy.
Publisher’s synopsis: TRUST NO ONE.
Wren Darlington has spent her whole life in hiding, honing her psychic abilities and aiding the rebel Uprising in small ways. On the Continent, being Modified means certain death—and Wren is one of the most powerful Mods in existence. When one careless mistake places her in the hands of the enemy and she’s forced to join their most elite training program, she’s finally handed the perfect opportunity to strike a devastating blow from inside their ranks.
LIE TO EVERYONE.
But training for Silver Block can be deadly. Especially when you’re harboring dangerous secrets and living in close quarters with everyone who wants you dead.
AND WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T FALL FOR YOUR GREATEST ENEMY.
As the stakes grow ever higher, Wren must prove herself to Silver Block. But that’s easier said than done when your commanding officer is the ruthless and infuriatingly irresistible Cross Redden, who doesn’t miss anything when it comes to her. And as war rages between Mods like her and those who aim to destroy them, Wren must decide just how far she’s willing to go to protect herself . . . and how much of the Continent is worth saving.
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Sestia by G. R. Macallister
Release date: May 13
Read it if: You want high fantasy from the best fantasy books of May 2025, but with a feminist twist. The opening of the underworld disrupts a newfound easy peace in the world above.
Publisher’s synopsis: While a fragile peace has begun to settle across the Five Queendoms of the known world, trouble brews beneath the smooth façade. The first gate between the Underlands, where Eresh rules over the shades of the dead, has already been opened. And the scheming shade of a dead sorcerer has evil plans he hopes to unleash on the world. In the world Above, the Scorpicae struggle to find a path forward in defeat. The embattled regent of Paxim gets more than she bargained for. And a young woman who barely survived the Sun Rites finds herself the indispensable right hand of a priest-queen whose sanity appears to be slipping away.
As living women across the Queendoms take desperate action to stay alive, and dead women plot to regain what they’ve lost, the time for the next Sun Rites nears. When five queens gather in the Holy City of Sestia for the most important ritual of their lives, who will be left standing?
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The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
Release date: May 13
Read it if: You love dark academia fantasy (and the book’s striking cover!). A magic professor struggles to keep literal demons at bay… and she might be dangerous herself.
Publisher’s synopsis: “Look at you, eating magic like you’re one of us.”
Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood School and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings, and securing the school’s boundaries from demonic incursions.
Walden is good at her job―no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. And it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from―is herself.
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Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil by Oliver Darkshire
Release date: May 13
Read it if: You’d like something totally bonkers in the best fantasy books of May 2025. When her lazy husband brings home a magic book, a country wife must go on a quest to save the village.
Publisher’s synopsis: In a tiny farm on the edge of the miserable village of East Grasby, Isabella Nagg is trying to get on with her tiny, miserable existence. Dividing her time between tolerating her feckless husband, caring for the farm’s strange animals, cooking up “scrunge,” and crooning over her treasured pot of basil, Isabella can’t help but think that there might be something more to life. When Mr. Nagg returns home with a spell book purloined from the local wizard, she thinks: what harm could a little magic do?
This debut novel by beloved rare bookseller and memoirist Oliver Darkshire reimagines a heroine of Boccaccio’s Decameron in a delightfully deranged world of talking plants, walking corpses, sentient animals, and shape-shifting sorcerers. As Isabella and her grouchy, cat-like companion set off to save the village from an entrepreneurial villain running a goblin-fruit Ponzi scheme, Darkshire’s tale revels in the ancient books and arcane folklore of a new and original kind of enchantment.
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The Devils by Joe Abercrombie
Release date: May 13
Read it if: You love heist narratives but yearn for a darker take. A holy man leads a ragtag group of violent misfits on a dangerous but necessary quest.
Publisher’s synopsis: 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.
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A Curse Carved in Bone by Danielle L. Jensen
Release date: May 13
Read it if: You’ve been waiting for the best fantasy books of May 2025 to get your hands on this sequel! As a young woman learns the truth about her heritage, she makes risky alliances to avoid a war.
Publisher’s synopsis: The secret of her divine heritage revealed, Freya finds herself on a path that will see thousands of lives lost to the magic in her blood. Desperate to avoid this dark fate, she risks an alliance with Skaland’s greatest enemy to seek answers from the seer who foretold her future—the same seer who sent Bjorn to kill her.
While Freya still seethes with rage over Bjorn’s betrayal, the blood oaths that bind her demand that she keep him close as she hunts for a way to avert the looming war.
Her magic draws her to the front lines of an old enmity, embroiling her with Nordeland’s Unfated—children of the gods who serve the king she was raised to fear. The same king who, unlike Bjorn, is now willing to fight at her back. For despite the desire that burns hot between Bjorn and Freya, his growing distrust of her chosen path threatens to drag them further apart.
As war approaches, gods and mortals must choose their weapons. Yet the fiercest battle will be the one Freya wages within herself. With the magic of two goddesses burning in her veins, she must weave the threads of destiny to decide her own fate: Will she be the shield that protects her people or the curse that destroys them?
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The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig
Release date: May 20
Read it if: You love epic romantasy, haunting visions, and mysterious love interests. A prophet goes on a quest with the one knight her visions can’t see.
Publisher’s synopsis: 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. 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. As much as she’d rather avoid Rodrick’s dark eyes and sharp tongue, only a heretic can defeat a god.
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Harmattan Season by Tochi Onyebuchi
Release date: May 27
Read it if: You’d like a touch of noir in the best fantasy books of May 2025. A PI investigates a murder amidst tension between colonizers and long-repressed indigenous groups restless to reclaim their powers.
Publisher’s synopsis: Veteran and private eye Boubacar doesn’t need much―least of all trouble―but trouble always seems to find him. Work has dried up, and he’d rather be left alone to deal with his bills as the Harmattan rolls in to coat the city in dust, but Bouba is a down on his luck deux fois, suspended between two cultures and two worlds.
When a bleeding woman stumbles onto his doorway, only to vanish just as quickly, Bouba reluctantly finds himself enmeshed in the secrets of a city boiling on the brink of violence. The French occupiers are keen to keep the peace at any cost, and the indigenous dugulen have long been shattered into restless factions vying for a chance to reclaim their lost heritage and abilities. As each hard-won clue reveals horrifying new truths, Bouba may have to carve out parts of himself he’s long kept hidden, and decide what he’s willing to offer next.
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A Fate Forged in Fire by Hazel McBride
Release date: May 27
Read it if: You enjoy the dragon fantasy trend and plenty of political intrigue. A powerful blacksmith tries to claim the throne in an increasingly-oppressive kingdom.
Publisher’s synopsis: Once a territory built on matriarchal rule and values, Tìr Teine has since grown frail from a long line of fruitless kings, the most recent of which have ruled under the influence of the True Religion, an oppressive group who have steadily poisoned the region with their anti-magic teachings.
Born to rule and blessed by fire, Aemyra has begrudgingly lived in hiding rather than risk her life in court, waiting in anticipation for the current king’s death so she can bond to his dragon, claim her throne, and protect her people. But when the king dies and Aemyra is ready to take what is rightfully hers, her ambitious plan is foiled, and she is thrust into a game of vicious politics and plots.
Her biggest adversary is Prince Fiorean, a dragon rider and one of the most powerful fire wielders in the territory. Cold, arrogant, and blindly supportive of his corrupt family, he is everything Aemyra despises. But as chaos engulfs the court, they find themselves reluctantly entwined, forced to forge an uneasy alliance—one that quickly ignites into something more dangerous than either of them expected.
Behind enemy lines and slowly falling for her so-called adversary, Aemyra uncovers just how far the rot of corruption has spread, and what she may have to sacrifice to claim her throne.
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The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association by Caitlin Rozakis
Release date: May 27
Read it if: You’d prefer the best fantasy books of May 2025 have a playful edge. The parents of a newly-made werewolf discover the ins and outs of PTAs at magical schools. Hint: they’re just as scary as mundane PTAs.
Publisher’s synopsis: When Vivian’s kindergartner, Aria, gets bitten by a werewolf, she is rapidly inducted into the hidden community of magical schools. Reeling from their sudden move, Vivian finds herself having to pick the right sacrificial dagger for Aria, keep stocked up on chew toys and play PTA politics with sirens and chthonic nymphs and people who literally can set her hair on fire.
As Vivian careens from hellhounds in the school corridors and demons at the talent show, she races to keep up with all the arcane secrets of her new society – shops only accessible by magic portal, the brutal Trials to enter high school, and the eternal inferno that is the parents’ WhatsApp group.
And looming over everything is a prophecy of doom that sounds suspiciously like it’s about Aria. Vivian might be facing the end of days, just as soon as she can get her daughter dressed and out of the door…
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The South Wind by Alexandria Warwick
Release date: May 27
Read it if: You love new twists on classic fairytales and myths. A cursed princess joins forces with her immortal ex before a curse destroys her kingdom.
Publisher’s synopsis: Princess Sarai of Ammara is cursed: on her twenty-fifth birthday she will fall into an endless, deadly sleep, plunging the kingdom into chaos and ruin. In a last-ditch attempt to save Sarai and their people, her father arranges her marriage to Prince Balior, a handsome young noble from a neighbouring kingdom. But then the South Wind, Notus—the immortal who once had her heart—returns into her life.
Sarai is determined to ignore Notus and follow her father’s plan. But Prince Balior has dark secrets, and as Sarai learns more about her betrothed, she realizes he may be her kingdom’s downfall. She pulls Notus into a fake engagement, buying the pair time to investigate what Balior is really planning. And why he’s so obsessed with the menacing labyrinth on the palace grounds.
Despite her distrust of her ex-lover, old feelings resurface while they team up to stop the scheming prince. As the deadly curse looms closer, Sarai must remain steadfast against the temptation of her desires. Any distraction could cost her life…and destroy her entire kingdom.
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