While the month of March may have been a bit on the lighter side when it comes to fantasy releases, trust me when I tell you that April does not have this problem. The start of Spring feels almost like a preview of things to come this summer, with the arrival of several major sequels, a brand new novel from megapopular author Leigh Bardugo, and multiple buzzy 2024 debuts.
Hope you enjoyed that brief break when it comes to continuously adding things to your TBR, is what I’m saying, because the publishing calendar through the next few months is stacked. And that veritable avalanche of great stories starts right now.
Here are our picks for the best fantasy books hitting shelves in April.
Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell
Release Date: April 2 from DAW
Why You’ll Love It: An intriguing mix of fantasy, horror, and romance, Someone You Can Build a Nest With boasts April’s most intriguing (and frequently disturbing) premise—a story told from the perspective of a shapeshifting, distinctly non-humanoid monster who falls in love with a woman who’s not just human—she’s a monster hunter. Deeply weird in the best sort of way.
Publisher’s Description: Shesheshen has made a mistake fatal to all monsters: she’s fallen in love.
Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals: a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth.
However, the hunters chase Shesheshen out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she’s found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human. Homily is kind and nurturing and would make an excellent co-parent: an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young could devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, she realizes humans don’t think about love that way.
Shesheshen hates keeping her identity secret from Homily, but just as she’s about to confess, Homily reveals why she’s in the area: she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere?
Eating her girlfriend isn’t an option. Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, but to give herself and Homily a chance at happiness, she has to figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did. As the hunt for the monster becomes increasingly deadly, Shesheshen must unearth the truth quickly, or soon both of their lives will be at risk.
And the bigger challenge remains: surviving her toxic in-laws long enough to learn to build a life with, rather than in, the love of her life.
A Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke
Release Date: April 2 from Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Why You’ll Love It: This enthralling debut that follows the story of a woman who spends her life trying to literally outrun a curse that will destroy her if she stops moving has drawn comparisons to Life of Pi and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. A very literal and surprisingly emotional interpretation of the idiom that life is about the journey, not the destination.
Publisher’s Description: Paris, 1885: Aubry Tourvel, a spoiled and stubborn nine-year-old girl, comes across a wooden puzzle ball on her walk home from school. She tosses it over the fence, only to find it in her backpack that evening. Days later, at the family dinner table, she starts to bleed to death.
When medical treatment only makes her worse, she flees to the outskirts of the city, where she realizes that it is this very act of movement that keeps her alive. So begins her lifelong journey on the run from her condition, which won’t allow her to stay anywhere for longer than a few days nor return to a place where she’s already been.
From the scorched dunes of the Calashino Sand Sea to the snow-packed peaks of the Himalayas; from a bottomless well in a Parisian courtyard, to the shelves of an infinite underground library, we follow Aubry as she learns what it takes to survive and ultimately, to truly live. But the longer Aubry wanders and the more desperate she is to share her life with others, the clearer it becomes that the world she travels through may not be quite the same as everyone else’s…
Draw Down the Moon by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
Release Date: April 2 from Wednesday Books
Why You’ll Love It: Besides boasting what is probably the prettiest cover of the month, Draw Down the Moon is the latest novel from the fantasy powerhouse duo of P.C. and Kristin Cast. Set in a world where people are either Mundane (without magic) or Moonstruck (born under a full moon with magical abilities), it follows a Mundane teen sent to a secret magical school when it’s discovered she has powers she shouldn’t.
Publisher’s Description: Wren Nightingale isn’t supposed to have any powers. Born of magickal parents but not under a moon sign, she was destined for life as a Mundane—right up until she starts glowing on her eighteenth birthday. In a heartbeat, Wren’s life is turned upside down, and she’s suddenly leaving her home for the mystical Academia de la Luna—a secret magickal school on a hidden island off the Seattle coast.
Lee Young has always known about his future at the Academia. He has one goal: pass the trials, impress the Moon Council, and uphold his family’s reputation. But he wasn’t expecting to be attending alongside the girl he’s been secretly in love with for as long as he can remember.
As Wren and Lee are thrown into the Academie’s gruelling trials, they quickly learn there’s something different–and dangerous–about the school this year. Wren will have to navigate a web of secrets, prophecies–and murder. And Lee will have to decide who to protect–his family’s legacy, or the girl he loves.
The Hemlock Queen by Hannah Whitten
Release Date: April 9 from Orbit
Why You’ll Love It: The second installment of Hannah Whitten’s Nightshade Crown series, The Hemlock Queen doubles down on much of what worked in the first book, only now with more worldbuilding, historical lore, and messy relationship dynamics (with a little bit of divine meddling on top for good measure). Whitten remains one of the best current examples of what a true romantasy writer should be, deftly balancing romance and fantasy in her stories in ways that feel natural, and necessary, without privileging one half of the genre over the other.
Publisher’s Description: The corrupt king August is dead. Prince Bastian has seized the throne and raised Lore—a necromancer and former smuggler—to his right hand side. Together they plan to cut out the rot from the heart of the sainted court and help the people of Dellaire. But not everyone is happy with the changes. The nobles are sowing dissent, the Kyrithean Empire is beating down their door, and Lore’s old allies are pulling away. Even Prince Bastian’s changed. No longer the hopeful, rakish, charismatic man Lore knows and loves, instead he’s reckless, domineering and cold.
And something’s been whispering in her ear. A voice, dark and haunting, that’s telling her there’s more to the story than she knows and more to her power than she can even imagine. A truth buried deep that could change everything.
With Bastian’s coronation fast approaching and enemies whispering on all sides, Lore must figure out how to protect herself, her prince, and her country before they all come crumbling down and whatever dark power has been creeping through the catacombs is unleashed.
The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo
Release Date: April 9 from Flatiron Books
Why You’ll Love It: Leigh Bardugo, the megapopular author of such popular books as Shadow and Bone and Ninth House, dips her toe into historical fantasy with The Familiar. Set during the age of the Spanish Inquisition, it’s the story of a scullery maid with a hidden knack for magic, the seemingly immortal “familiar” who helps her prepare for a competition that could change her life, and the strange bond that develops between them. Lush and deeply addictive.
Publisher’s Description: In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family’s social position.
What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain’s king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England’s heretic queen—and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king’s favor.
Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the line between magic, science, and fraud is never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition’s wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive—even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santangel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.
A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland
Release Date: April 9 from Dell
Why You’ll Love It: A queer reimagining of the Scottish folktale “The Selkie Wife”, A Sweet Sting of Salt is lush, atmospheric, and threaded with multiple kinds of magic.
Publisher’s Description: When a sharp cry wakes Jean in the middle of the night during a terrible tempest, she’s convinced it must have been a dream. But when the cry comes again, Jean ventures outside and is shocked by what she discovers—a young woman in labor, already drenched to the bone in the freezing cold and barely able to speak a word of English.
Although Jean is the only midwife in the village and for miles around, she’s at a loss as to who this woman is or where she’s from; Jean can only assume she must be the new wife of the neighbor up the road, Tobias. And when Tobias does indeed arrive at her cabin in search of his wife, Muirin, Jean’s questions continue to grow. Why has he kept his wife’s pregnancy a secret? And why does Muirin’s open demeanor change completely the moment she’s in his presence?
Though Jean learned long ago that she should stay out of other people’s business, her growing concern—and growing feelings—for Muirin mean she can’t simply set her worries aside. But when the answers she finds are more harrowing than she ever could have imagined, she fears she may have endangered herself, Muirin, and the baby. Will she be able to put things right and save the woman she loves before it’s too late, or will someone have to pay for Jean’s actions with their life?
The Book That Broke the World by Mark Lawrence
Release Date: April 9 from Ace
Why You’ll Love It: Fantasy stories about the magic of books—or in this particular case, giant, magical, time-and-space-bending libraries—are always a must-read for me. This sequel to The Book that Wouldn’t Burn, sees its two central characters set on very different paths, one that will require leaving the Great Library, and the other that will require going deeper into its world than ever before.
Publisher’s Description: The Library spans worlds and times. It touches and joins distant places. It is memory and future. And amid its vastness Evar Eventari both found, and lost, Livira Page.
Evar has been forced to flee the library, driven before an implacable foe. Livira, trapped in a ghost world, has to recover the book she wrote—one which is the only true threat to the library’s existence—if she’s to return to her life.
While Evar’s journey leads him outside into the vastness of a world he’s never seen, Livira’s path will taker her deep inside her own writing, where she must wrestle with her stories in order to reclaim the volume in which they were written.
The secret war that defines the library has chosen its champions and set them on the board. The time has come when they must fight for what they believe, or lose everything.
To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X. Chang
Release Date: April 16 from Del Ray
Why You’ll Love It: This buzzy debut about a power struggle on a conquered magical world follows the story of a girl “blessed by Death,” who can still the life force from anything she touches, who chooses to essentially become a collaborator rather than risk her and her family’s safety pushing back against those who have colonized her people. One folks will be talking about this spring.
Publisher’s Description: Heroes die, cowards live. Daughter of a conquered world, Ruying hates the invaders who descended from the heavens long before she was born and defeated the magic of her people with technologies unlike anything her world had ever seen.
Blessed by Death, born with the ability to pull the life right out of mortal bodies, Ruying shouldn’t have to fear these foreign invaders, but she does. Especially because she wants to keep herself and her family safe.
When Ruying’s Gift is discovered by an enemy prince, he offers her an impossible deal: If she becomes his private assassin and eliminates his political rivals—whose deaths he swears would be for the good of both their worlds and would protect her people from further brutalization—her family will never starve or suffer harm again. But to accept this bargain, she must use the powers she has always feared, powers that will shave years off her own existence.
Can Ruying trust this prince, whose promises of a better world make her heart ache and whose smiles make her pulse beat faster? Are the evils of this agreement really in the service of a much greater good? Or will she betray her entire nation by protecting those she loves the most?
Saint-Seducing Gold by Brittany N. Williams
Release Date: April 23 from Amulet Books
Why You’ll Love It: The second installment in Brittany N. Williams’s Forge and Fracture Saga mixes Orisha mythology, fae magic, and Shakespearean England to remarkable effect, as a girl with a gift for enchanting metal must re-forge an alliance between the humans and the Fae to stop a looming war.
Publisher’s Description: There’s danger in the court of James I. Magical metal-worker Joan Sands must reforge the Pact between humanity and the Fae to stop the looming war. As violence erupts across London and the murderous spymaster Robert Cecil closes in, the Fae queen Titanea coerces Joan into joining the royal court while holding her godfather prisoner in the infamous Tower of London. Now Joan will have to survive deadly machinations both magical and mortal all while balancing the magnetic pull of her two loves—Rose and Nick—before the world as she knows it is destroyed forever
A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall
Release Date: April 23 from Orbit
Why You’ll Love It: This whimsical and cozy epistolary novel has definite Emily WIlde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries vibes, but its setting that blends an underwater world with academia helps it stand out from the fantasy pack.
Publisher’s Description: A beautiful discovery outside the window of her underwater home prompts the reclusive E. to begin a correspondence with renowned scholar Henerey Clel. The letters they share are filled with passion, at first for their mutual interests, and then, inevitably, for each other.
Together, they uncover a mystery from the unknown depths, destined to transform the underwater world they both equally fear and love. But by no mere coincidence, a seaquake destroys E.’s home, and she and Henerey vanish.
A year later, E.’s sister Sophy, and Henerey’s brother Vyerin, are left to solve the mystery, piecing together the letters, sketches and field notes left behind—and learn what their siblings’ disappearance might mean for life as they know it.
Song of the Six Realms by Judy I. Lin
Release Date: April 23 from Fiewel & Friends
Why You’ll Love It: The latest novel from the author of A Magic Steeped in Poison once again deftly mixes Chinese folklore with music and romance in a delicately rendered fantasy world.
Publisher’s Description: Xue, a talented young musician, has no past and probably no future. Orphaned at a young age, her kindly poet uncle took her in and arranged for an apprenticeship at one of the most esteemed entertainment houses in the kingdom. She doesn’t remember much from before entering the House of Flowing Water, and when her uncle is suddenly killed in a bandit attack, she is devastated to lose her last connection to a life outside of her indenture contract.
With no family and no patron, Xue is facing the possibility of a lifetime of servitude playing the qin for nobles that praise her talent with one breath and sneer at her lowly social status with the next. Then one night she is unexpectedly called to the garden to put on a private performance for the enigmatic Duke Meng. The young man is strangely kind and awkward for nobility, and surprises Xue further with an irresistible offer: serve as a musician in residence at his manor for one year, and he’ll set her free of her indenture.
But the Duke’s motives become increasingly more suspect when he and Xue barely survive an attack by a nightmarish monster, and when he whisks her away to his estate, she discovers he’s not just some country noble: He’s the Duke of Dreams, one of the divine rulers of the Celestial Realm. There she learns the Six Realms are on the brink of disaster, and incursions by demonic beasts are growing more frequent.
The Duke needs Xue’s help to unlock memories from her past that could hold the answers to how to stop the impending war… but first Xue will need to survive being the target of every monster and deity in the Six Realms.
Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB