17 fantasy and science fiction books to read in September 2023
By Daniel Roman
THE ICE by Ryan Cahill (The Bound and the Broken novella #3) — September 23
Ryan Cahill’s The Bound and the Broken is an epic fantasy series in the vein of the classics, with elves, dwarves, dragons and epic warfare. So far the main series consists of three books: Of Blood and Fire, Of Darkness and Light, and Of War and Ruin. There are also two novellas: The Fall and The Exile.
There’s a huge fantasy world waiting for you in this series. This month, Cahill returns with another Bound and the Broken novella: The Ice. While The Ice is technically a prequel set before the main The Bound and the Broken series, to get the full effect you’ll probably want to start reading at the beginning.
In Epheria, you are the predators. Here, you are the prey.
Almost four hundred years have passed since the fall of The Order. Four hundred years since the empire rose. Four hundred years since the last dragon egg hatched.
In the icy wasteland of Valacia, Aeson Virandr searches for the one thing that could turn the tide of war: hope.
But there is a reason no soul has ever returned from Valacia.
Hope comes at a cost, one that can only be paid in blood.
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THE HEXOLOGISTS by Josiah Bancroft (The Hexologists #1) — September 26
Josiah Bancroft is the author of the Babel series, which began with Senlin Ascends. That one wrapped up last year, and already Bancroft is back with something new: The Hexologists. It follows a husband and wife team who go around solving hexes for clients, which sounds like a fun set up with plenty of Bancroft’s trademark wit.
The Hexologists, Iz and Warren Wilby, are quite accustomed to helping desperate clients with the bugbears of city life. Aided by hexes and a bag of charmed relics, the Wilbies have recovered children abducted by chimney-wraiths, removed infestations of barb-nosed incubi, and ventured into the Gray Plains of the Unmade to soothe a troubled ghost. Well-acquainted with the weird, they never shy away from a challenging case.
But when they are approached by the royal secretary and told the king pleads to be baked into a cake—going so far as to wedge himself inside a lit oven—the Wilbies soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery that could very well see the nation turned on its head. Their effort to expose a royal secret buried under forty years of lies brings them nose to nose with a violent anti-royalist gang, avaricious ghouls, alchemists who draw their power from a hell-like dimension, and a bookish dragon who only occasionally eats people.
Armed with a love toughened by adversity and a stick of chalk that can conjure light from the darkness, hope from the hopeless, Iz and Warren Wilby are ready for a case that will test every spell, skill, and odd magical artifact in their considerable bag of tricks.
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads
DEVIL’S BATTLE by Taylor Anderson (The Artillerymen #3) — September 26
The third entry in Taylor Anderson’s historical fantasy series The Artillerymen, Devil’s Battle follows a group of 1800’s soldiers who were on their way to fight in the Mexican-American war but instead were mysteriously transported to an alternate Earth populated with strange new sentient species. And also dinosaurs. It’s a spinoff to Anderson’s popular Destroyermen series, but with a whole new cast of characters and even more epic battles.
After being stranded on a very different and more perilous Earth, Colonel Lewis Cayce led his small army of displaced Americans, natives of the Yucatán, and Jaguar Warriors to defeat the biggest host the Dominion general Agon could assemble. Most unexpectedly, General Agon came to recognize the inherent evil of the Dominion and its depraved Blood Priests and turned on his former leaders.
Awkwardly at first, Lewis Cayce and Agon join forces to press their common enemy back toward the dark heart of the Dominion in the Great Valley of Mexico. But more Dominion troops have been drawn from the west to stop the Allied march on the Holy City, and a grueling race has begun. Worse, the Gran Cruzada—a vast Dom army that was marching on the far Californias to eject yet another heretic foe—might’ve already been recalled to face Cayce’s soldiers.
Time has become more precious than ever, and before Lewis Cayce can even try to implement his plan for total victory, he and his force must brave their greatest challenge yet—a brutal fight against a larger, better-trained army whose commander has a gift for strategy to rival Cayce’s own. The struggle to keep all his soldiers alive, new friends and old comrades alike, will test Cayce like never before, and, win or lose, nothing will be the same.