15 new fantasy and science fiction books to read in January 2024

SO LET THEM BURN by Kamilah Cole—January 16

So Let Them Burn is the debut novel from Kamilah Cole. It's a Jamaican-inspired fantasy story where a young woman must choose between saving her sister or her homeland. The story's heroine, Faron, has been blessed by the gods—which is probably helpful when it comes to fighting off an invading empire of dragonriders. I can't recall ever seeing dragonriders mixed with a Jamaican-inspired fantasy setting before, so I'm more than a little intrigued about So Let Them Burn.

Something else interesting to note: So Let Them Burn is technically being marketed as a YA book, but the comp titles which are listed on Amazon are Xiran Jay Zhao's Iron Widow and Samantha Shannon's The Priory of the Orange Tree. Iron Widow is also YA, but Priory is a massive, dense sapphic adult epic fantasy book. To me that says that So Let Them Burn has elements that will probably make for a complex and gripping read, no matter your age.

Faron Vincent can channel the power of the gods. Five years ago, she used her divine magic to liberate her island from its enemies, the dragon-riding Langley Empire. But now, at seventeen, Faron is all powered up with no wars to fight. She’s a legend to her people and a nuisance to her neighbors.

When she’s forced to attend an international peace summit, Faron expects that she will perform tricks like a trained pet and then go home. She doesn’t expect her older sister, Elara, forming an unprecedented bond with an enemy dragon—or the gods claiming the only way to break that bond is to kill her sister.

As Faron’s desperation to find another solution takes her down a dark path, and Elara discovers the shocking secrets at the heart of the Langley Empire, both must make difficult choices that will shape each other’s lives, as well as the fate of their world.

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TO CHALLENGE HEAVEN by David Weber and Chris Kennedy (Out of the Dark #3)—January 16

Back to series-enders, we'll be saying goodbye to the Out of the Dark science fiction series by David Weber and Chris Kennedy this month. The final book, To Challenge Heaven, is due out right in the middle of the month. The series is sci-fi of the classic, action-packed sort, with an alien invasion forcing humanity to ally with other sentient species in order to avoid extinction.

In a universe teeming with predators, humanity needs friends. And fast.

We've come a long way in the forty years since the Shongairi attacked Earth, killed half its people, and then were driven away by an alliance of humans with the other sentient bipeds who inhabit our planet.

We took the technology they left behind, and rapidly built ourselves into a starfaring civilization. Because we haven't got a moment to lose. Because it's clear that there are even more powerful, more hostile aliens out there, and Earth needs allies.

But it also transpires that the Shongairi expedition that nearly destroyed our home planet ...wasn't an official one. That, indeed, its commander may have been acting as an unwitting cats-paw for the Founders, the ancient alliance of very old, very evil aliens who run the Hegemony that dominates our galaxy, and who hold the Shongairi, as they hold most non-Founder species, in not-so-benign contempt.

Indeed, it may turn out to be possible to turn the Shongairi into our allies against the Hegemony. There's just the small matter of the Shongairi honor code, which makes bushido look like a child's game. We might be able to make them our friends -- if we can crush their planetary defenses in the greatest battle we, or they, have ever seen...

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