10 fantasy and science fiction books to read in December 2023
By Daniel Roman
THE SERPENT AND THE WINGS OF NIGHT by Carissa Broadbent (The Nightborn Duet #1) — December 5
Perhaps you’d like to rind in the holidays with some vampirism; if so, this next book is for you. The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent is being described as “The Hunger Games meets vampires,” so expect some brutal games to the death as well as sultry bloodsucking horror.
This is the first book in Broadbent’s Crowns of Nyaxia romantic fantasy series; you might also see the series referred to as The Nightborn Duet, since there are technically other Nyaxia tales outside of this main sequence, such as the novella Six Scorched Roses or the standalone novel Slaying the Vampire Conqueror. There’s a decent amount of story to sink your teeth into if you enjoy The Serpent and the Wings of Night.
For humans and vampires, the rules of survival are the same: never trust, never yield, and always – always – guard your heart.
The adopted human daughter of the Nightborn vampire king, Oraya carved her place in a world designed to kill her. Her only chance to become something more than prey is entering the Kejari: a legendary tournament held by the goddess of death herself.
But winning won’t be easy amongst the most vicious warriors from all three vampire houses. To survive, Oraya is forced to make an alliance with a mysterious rival.
Everything about Raihn is dangerous. He is a ruthless vampire, an efficient killer, an enemy to her father’s crown… and her greatest competition. Yet, what terrifies Oraya most of all is that she finds herself oddly drawn to him.
But there’s no room for compassion in the Kejari. War for the House of Night brews, shattering everything that Oraya thought she knew about her home. And Raihn may understand her more than anyone – but their blossoming attraction could be her downfall, in a kingdom where nothing is more deadly than love.
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads
HOUSE OF OPEN WOUNDS by Adrian Tchaikovsky (The Tyrant Philosophers #2) — December 7
Next up, we stop in with Adrian Tchaikovsky, who I have come to realize over the course of this year of covering book releases puts out books with stunning regularity. House of Open Wounds is the second novel in Tchaikovsky’s fantasy series The Tyrant Philosphers. The first book in the series, City of Last Chances, was a standalone fantasy book which set in a city under occupation as magical forces, criminal organizations and fanatical armies clashed.
House of Open Wounds is being billed as both a companion novel and sequel. It follows a team of medics and showS a very different side to the Palleseen invasion than we got in the first book.
City-by-city, kingdom-by-kingdom, the Palleseen have sworn to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world. As their legions scour the world of superstition with the bright flame of reason, so they deliver a mountain of ragged, holed and scorched flesh to the field hospital tents just behind the front line.
Which is where Yasnic, one-time priest, healer and rebel, finds himself. Reprieved from the gallows and sent to war clutching a box of orphan Gods, he has been sequestered to a particularity unorthodox medical unit.
Led by ‘the Butcher’, an ogre of a man who’s a dab hand with a bone-saw and an alchemical tincture, the unit’s motley crew of conscripts, healers and orderlies are no strangers to the horrors of war. Theirs is an unspeakable trade: elbow-deep in gore they have a first-hand view of the suffering caused by flesh-rending monsters, arcane magical weaponry and embittered enemy soldiers.
Entrusted – for now – with saving lives deemed otherwise un-saveable, the field hospital’s crew face a precarious existence. Their work with unapproved magic, necromancy, demonology and Yasnic’s thoroughly illicit Gods could lead to the unit being disbanded, arrested or worse.
Beset by enemies within and without, the last thing anyone needs is a miracle…
Available in the U.S. in ebook on December 7; hardcover release expected on March 5, 2024.