I’m toying with the idea of a doing a proper list of books I’m looking forward to in 2025, but for the moment I thought I’d start with the books that look good for this month, January.

While the book that most people are probably going to buy is the new one from romantasy phenomenon Rebecca Yarros, Onyx Storm, I’m yet to dive into that series, and other books have more immediate appeal to me.

The Orb of Coraido, Katherine Addison

First up is one I edited. I fell for Sarah Monette’s (written as by Katherine Addison) Chronicles of Osreth when The Goblin Emperor was published, and I’ve hugely enjoyed The Cemeteries of Amalo sequence, which is why I jumped at the chance to work on a new novella, The Orb of Coraido,  that is coming from Subterranean Press. This one is set just after the initiating events of The Goblin Emperor  and is the story of an unlikely historian unraveling an academic mystery.

A Conventional Boy, Charles Stross

When I read Charlies Stross’s The Atrocity Archive when it was serialised in Spectrum back in 2001 I didn’t think I’d still be reading stories about the Laundry a quarter century later, but here we are.  Another tale of Cold War shenanigans and Lovecraftian nightmares, but this time focussed on a man who was scooped up by the Laundry for playing Dungeons & Dragons as a teen and ended up in custody until his 40s. Until he gets the chance to escape so he can visit a local gaming convention. A short novel, it has a lot of the pleasures of the Laundry Files, and is another step closer to the end of it all.

Picks and Shovels, Cory Doctorow

There’s not a lot of discussion that I see about how much of the most enjoyable science fiction and fantasy out there is basically crime or spy fiction in an SFw setting. Cory Doctorow moved into this territory with his first Martin Hench novel, Red  Team Blues, back in 2022. The third, Picks and Shovels, is Hench’s origin story and looks like enormous fun.

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, Grady Hendrix

There are several trends happening in genre at the moment, and one has been the biggest resurgence in horror since the 1980s. Alongside Paul Tremblay, Stephen Graham Jones, and others, Grady Hendrix has been making a huge name for himself.  This one, which comes very highly recommended, is the latest and apparently best and comes out this week.

Death of the Author, Nnedi Okorafor

Nnedi Okorafor has been a force in the field since her first work appeared nearly 25 years ago, delivering major work after major work, like Who Fears Death, the Akata Witch sequence, and Lagoon. Last year she got a lot of attention for getting a huge advance for what she described as the book she’d been waiting to write. This ambitious and exciting novel is both the story of a writer and the life they’re living, and a book within a book. I’ve not picked up a new Okorafor for a while, so I’m looking forward to this one now it’s finally coming out!

Waterblack, Alex Pheby

About four or five years ago Ian Mond alerted me to the incredible books being published by Galley Beggar Press, and particularly highlighted a remarkable new fantasy series, Cities of the Weft, being written by Alex Pheby. Rich, strange, and wildly imaginative, the series started with Mordew in 2020 and was followed by Malarkoi in 2022, and now concludes with Waterblack. If you love fantasy, if you loved Mervyn Peake, if you want something new and different, this is the one. Everything about these books is amazing, and I can’t wait to read this when it gets here.

Hammajang Luck, Makana Yamamoto

And, finally, a debut. Hammajang Luck came out in late 2024 in the UK and Australia, but is a January title in the US, so I’m sneaking it in here. Described as a Oceans 8 meets Bladerunner, it’s a heist novel set on a space station. All of the reviews are good, and I have a copy sitting on my desk to read before the month is out. This one looks like a lot of fun. and I’m looking forward to getting a chance to sit down with it when I can .

For our first episode of 2025, we touch upon novels we’ve been reading for the new year, including  Charles Stross’s 13th Laundry novel A Conventional Boy and Ray Nayler’s Where the Axe is Buried, as well as the frustrations of reading books on deadlines—as opposed to wallowing in them at leisure, and some non-SF writers we like.

Gary then mentions how hard it is to gain perspective on novels of the past year, and suggests looking instead at important books of the entire past quarter-century from the perspective of 2025.  We only got partway through his list, which included novels by Alastair Reynolds, Kim Stanley Robinson, Octavia Butler, M. John Harrison, Margaret Atwood, Susanna Clarke, Gene Wolfe, Cixin Liu, and Robert Charles Wilson; collections by Kelly Link, Margo Lanagan, and Jeff Ford; anthologies by Sheree R. Thomas and Gardner Dozois—the last of which leads to a discussion of the durability of space opera as a defining SF theme. Plenty of stuff to argue with this week!