5 Fantasy Fiction Books Goodreads Readers Are Most Excited For This October

This is shaping up to be a big month for fantasy readers, a point heralded by Goodreads’ Reader’s “Most Anticipated October Books” list. New fantasy fiction titles are offering everything from warring fae and dangerous demons to gods of death, forbidden romance and superpowered enemies. And it’s part of an especially busy stretch for the genre: Terry Brooks recently returned to the world of Shannara with Brona, while Brandon Sanderson’s The Fires of December is still to come later this year. Better still, several of October’s most anticipated releases come from authors readers already know well, including Sarah J. Maas, V.E. Schwab, Marie Lu and Ann Liang, alongside an intriguing debut from Charlotte B. Plumb.

For Maas fans, A Court of Splintered Harmony marks the long-awaited return of A Court of Thorns and Roses, beginning an enormous new story the author says grew beyond the confines of a single book. Schwab, meanwhile, heads in the opposite direction with Victorious, bringing her Villains series and the complicated relationship between Victor Vale and Eli Ever toward its conclusion.

Elsewhere, Lu’s Mortal Things introduces a London where mortals serve as Harbingers for powerful gods, while Liang’s To Dream in Darkness asks one irresistible question: What happens when death falls in love with life? And newcomer Plumb enters the romantasy arena with Reap & Sow, where desperate humans can bargain away years of their lives to demons.

Here are five examples of fantasy fiction worth adding to your fall reading list.

‘Victorious’ (October 6)

Author: V.E. Schwab
Publisher: Tor Books

What It’s About: Thirteen years after Vicious introduced Victor Vale and Eli Ever, Schwab brings their story to an end with the third and final Villains novel. Once best friends, Victor and Eli became superpowered enemies whose obsession with each other has left destruction in its wake. Now allies and adversaries converge for one final confrontation—but another player has been arranging the board, and Victor and Eli aren’t necessarily the ones controlling the game. Victorious completes the trilogy Schwab began with Vicious in 2013 and continued with Vengeful in 2018.

V.E. Schwab says: “I’ve always thought of it as three installments. I think when we say ‘trilogy,’ it gives a really specific structural expectation. I wanted each book to stand in its own light and to do its own thing. I had a vision for how it would end; I had a vision for who would be left standing and what the situation would be. It was just a matter of, ‘How do I want to get from where I ended Vengeful to that moment?’” 

“A lot of [Victorious] opens in the first chapters on the concept of aftermath, specifically what happens when you no longer have a purpose. Everyone is a little bit adrift. They’re still in a purgatory. They’re still hiding. They’re not living normally… This one is counting down to the end… Book 3 is a book about psychology. It’s about control, it’s about the illusion of control and it’s about our own perception of our own reality.” (Entertainment Weekly)

‘Reap & Sow’ (October 6)

Author: Charlotte B. Plumb
Publisher: Penguin

What It’s About: In the impoverished city of Blackbridge, desperate people can literally sell years of their lives to demons in return for what they desire. Eda Shaw knows the business intimately: She and her brothers arrange those bargains for the demon Mr. Night. When a deal goes wrong and her brothers are arrested, Eda turns to another demon, Kit’rath, for help. He’s charming, dangerous and apparently one of the few beings Mr. Night fears. Their alliance could save Eda’s family—and cost her far more than she intended to surrender. The dark, gothic romantasy is Plumb’s debut and the first half of a planned duology.

Charlotte B. Plumb says: “The initial spark for Reap & Sow actually came while I was watching Peaky Blinders. I started wondering what a family on the wrong side of the law might look like in a fantasy world—and what they might trade in. The idea of a ‘deal with the devil’ emerged from there, eventually leading to a magic system where people bargain away years of their lives to demons. From that point, the story really just took on a life of its own. In terms of making a Pact myself, few things would be worth bargaining years of my life for…besides becoming a full-time author, perhaps! Luckily, that dream came true for me without any dark magic—demonic or otherwise.”

‘A Court of Splintered Harmony’ (October 27)

Author: Sarah J. Maas
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

What It’s About: The sixth A Court of Thorns and Roses novel returns readers to the Fae territories as an ancient evil awakens beneath a mountain lake. The Night Court must prepare for the growing threat, but Prythian is still recovering from earlier conflicts and old alliances have become strained or shattered. Betrayals and newly revealed truths have created divisions among the very people who may have to stand together to survive. 

Sarah J. Maas says: “The story that was finally ready to come out of me was big. Really, really, really big. And as I started writing this, it came out in a way that surprised me. What if it took me more than a thousand pages to tell the story that needed to be told, the arc that I wanted to create from start to finish? What if that took beyond the constraints of a single volume?” 

“I’m not playing by anyone else’s rules. The most important thing for me is to write these stories the way they need to be told, but to also honor my fans who make all this possible. And I’m not playing by industry rules. I’m not playing by marketing. I’m doing what feels organic and good for me and my readership.” (Call Her Daddy podcast)

‘Mortal Things’ (October 27)

Author: Marie Lu
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers

What It’s About: Rose Lin Fairchild is the Harbinger of Raven, the god of Death, which makes her quite literally a bringer of death. When a murder among the gods leaves Rose as Raven’s heir, she becomes entangled in the immortals’ dangerous struggles for power. Standing between Rose and her ascension is Étienne Beauchard, the Regent of Lies, for whom she has complicated feelings. Lu combines mythology, romantasy and a murder mystery in this standalone YA fantasy. 

Marie Lu says: “In this version of our world, there are gods who rule all kinds of things. So there’s a god of air, there’s a god of rain, there’s a god of death, there’s a god of love and so on. They cannot really interact with the mortal world, but they need our energy in order to survive. So what they do is recruit mortals like us to work for them as harbingers. And Rose is one of these harbingers.”

“Étienne was so fun to write. He is the top harbinger for the god of lies. He has the power of illusion, so he can create things that make you believe what you see even though it’s not real. He’s great at lying, and he’s kind of a Robin Hood-Han Solo kind of guy. He’s a little bit sarcastic and a little bit cheeky…. I had a lot of fun bouncing their personalities off of each other.”

‘To Dream in Darkness’ (October 27)

Author: Ann Liang
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

What It’s About: Set in a mystical version of ancient China, Liang’s celestial romance brings together Ruija, the Goddess of Healing, and Keran, the God of Death. Their shared experience of carrying out divine responsibilities creates an unexpected connection, but gods falling in love has potentially catastrophic consequences for mortals—including floods and plague. Liang combines mythology, historical fantasy and romance in a story about two immortals forced to weigh their feelings against the damage those feelings could cause.

Ann Liang says: “The way that we have been pitching this is, what if death fell in love with life? I feel like that kind of just captures the heart of the book because it is about the God of Death, who is fated to kill the God of Healing, but she tries to make a bargain with him so she can basically buy herself more time to live and to escape. As these things tend to go, they kind of fall in love with each other, even though it’s basically world-ending if they do.” 

“I honestly think it started with my love for xianxia dramas. I was raised on those dramas, and I think just as a writer, when you’re so interested in this particular kind of genre or this type of media, you want to be able to capture that feeling in your own writing. I knew that to write an epic fantasy would be very different and it would be a challenge.”

“There are just certain aspects of writing a romantasy like this that you can’t get with contemporary, like having the whole sword-to-the-throat scene or threatening each other with torture and murder, where in real life it’s like, okay, you would be locked up right away. In fantasy, it’s cool. It’s hot.” (theincoherentfangirl)