15 highly anticipated fantasy and science fiction books coming this fall

8. The Bone Shard Emperor by Andrea Stewart (11/9)

It feels like I just got done raving about The Bone Shard Daughter in last week’s article, but here we find ourselves again to talk about the sequel, because this…this is a series that every fantasy fan should know about.

The Bone Shard Emperor is the second book in Andrea Stewart’s debut trilogy, The Drowning Empire, and if the first book is any indication, this is going to be one of the fall’s biggest releases. The Bone Shard Daughter was a highly original story about an empire teetering on the brink of insurrection, told from the viewpoints of multiple characters occupying various positions in the society. The story had some beats that will likely feel familiar to fantasy fans, but the skills, twists, and narrative tricks that Stewart employed to tell the tale made it stand out.

At the heart of the book is Lin, the daughter of the emperor, who begins the story with amnesia and is undergoing a sort of training regiment to help her regain her memories so that she can properly succeed her father one day. That training regiment involves teaching her how to manipulate constructs, monstrous creatures sewn together from the bodies of various animals and powered by bone shards. In this world, the Empire’s subjects are forced as children to give up a literal piece of their skull, which the Emperor uses to power the constructs and, presumably, keep everyone safe from an ancient magical enemy.

As you might imagine, this isn’t the most popular system among the people. All the characters become swept up in this uprising in one way or another, but one particular player worth noting is Jovis, a smuggler turned unwilling hero who happens to have the single most lovable animal companion of any book in recent memory. It’s worth reading these books for Mephi alone, and that is a hill I will gladly die on.

The Bone Shard Emperor picks up immediately following the events of the first novel. Which is great, since that book ended in an extremely satisfying way that somehow still managed to be an incredible cliffhanger. Nothing is what it seems in this series, and the twists are nuts. Definitely one to mark on your calendar.

The Bone Shard Emperor comes out on November 9.