The dog days of summer are here, which means the clock is ticking on lazy afternoons, pool weekends, and beach escapes. It also means that the publishing industry is busy gearing up for the big Fall releases that will be hitting shelves in just a few short weeks. Traditionally, that’s often led to slim pickings when it comes to new releases in August, but 2025 certainly has no shortage of new titles for fantasy fans to get hype over. (In fact, one of the most anticipated releases of the year—R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis is an August release, likely to get out ahead of those aforementioned September titles.)
Here are our picks for the best fantasy books hitting shelves this August.
Scorched Earth by Danielle L. Jensen
Release Date: August 5 from Tor Teen
Why We’re Excited: The long-awaited (and much-anticipated) final installment of Danielle L. Jensen’s Dark Shores series promises to hold plenty of secrets, sacrifices, and shocking twists before we reach the final page.
Publisher’s Description: Lydia and Killian escaped their enemy’s grasp, but not without consequences. While they race to destroy the blight, Lydia fights an internal war against the Corrupter’s influence knowing defeat means death for those she loves. Tormented by a battle that can’t be won with blades, Killian must find the queen they risked everything to rescue without falling prey to Corrupter’s weapons, both living and dead.
Teriana and Marcus thwarted assassination, but now must live with the dark truths that have been revealed. As Teriana hunts for allies, she must face the dire circumstances of her imprisoned people, driving her to strike a dangerous deal with the Empire. Consumed by guilt over his crimes, Marcus embarks on an ambitious campaign to save those he condemned, which risks him becoming the conqueror the Empire desires him to be.
With the blight consuming everything in its path and the Empire crushing everyone who stands before it, Reath is falling beneath the tide of evil. Secrets will be revealed that break hearts even as they forge new alliances, but only the greatest sacrifices of all will turn the tide in the battle for the liberty of every nation on Reath.
The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar
Release Date: August 5 from Ace
Why We’re Excited: The adult debut from the popular author of children’s favorite Holes, The Magician of Tiger Castle is a fairytale-esque story of a magician forced to concoct a potion to convince the princess he loves like a daughter to agree to an arranged marriage. His subsequent crisis of conscience helps the self-proclaimed coward find his courage and concoct a plan to save the kingdom. Charming, and lots of The Princess Bride vibes.
Publisher’s Description: Long ago and far away (and somewhere south of France) lies the kingdom of Esquaveta. There, Princess Tullia is in nearly as much peril as her struggling kingdom. Esquaveta desperately needs to forge an alliance, and to that end, Tullia’s father has arranged a marriage between her and an odious prince. However, one month before the “wedding of the century,” Tullia falls in love with a lowly apprentice scribe.
The king turns to Anatole, his much-maligned magician. Seventeen years earlier, when Anatole first came to the castle, he was regarded as something of a prodigy. But after a long series of failures—the latest being an attempt to transform sand into gold—he has become the object of contempt and ridicule. The only one who still believes in him is the princess.
When the king orders Anatole to brew a potion that will ensure Tullia agrees to the wedding, Anatole is faced with an impossible choice. With one chance to save the marriage, the kingdom, and, of most importance to him, his reputation, will he betray the princess—or risk ruin?
The Society of Unknowable Objects by Gareth Brown
Release Date: August 12 from William Morrow
Why We’re Excited: The latest novel from the author of last year’s The Book of Doors, The Society of Unknowable Objects is a story of a group whose job is to safeguard magical objects and keep them out of the hands of bad or dangerous actors. But any secret society is likely to have plenty of secrets of its own, and when newest member Magda Sparks is sent to Hong Kong to retrieve a newly discovered artifact, she discovers more than her share.
Publisher’s Description: The world of unknowable objects—magical items that most people have no idea possess powers—has been quiet for decades, but the three current members of a secret society have remained watchful, meeting every six months in the basement of a bookshop in London. They are pledged to protect their archive of magical items hidden away, safe from the outside world—and the world safe from them. But when Frank Simpson, the longest-standing member of the Society of Unknowable Objects, hears of a new artifact coming to light in Hong Kong, he sends Magda Sparks—author by day and newest member—to investigate.
Within hours of arriving in Hong Kong, Magda is facing death and danger, confronted by a professional killer who seems to know all about unknowable objects, specifically one that was stolen from him a decade before. Magda is forced to flee, using an artifact that not even the rest of the Society knows about.
Returning to London, Magda learns hers is not the only secret being kept from the other two members. And that the most pernicious secret is about the nature of the Society’s mission. Her discoveries will lead her on a perilous journey, across the Atlantic to the deep south of the United States, now in pursuit of not an unknowable object, but an unknowable person: the professional killer she first faced in Hong Kong. In doing so, Magda begins to understand that there are even more in the world who are chasing these magical items, and that her own family’s legacy is tied up in keeping all these secrets under wraps.
Magic has always been too powerful to reveal to the world. But Magda will learn there might be something even more powerful.
Warrior Princess Assassin by Brigid Kemmerer
Release Date: August 12 from Avon
Why We’re Excited: The steamy adult fantasy debut from megapopular YA author Brigid Kemmerer, Warrior Princess Assassin follows the story of three characters whose lives are irresistibly entangled with one another: A princess caught between duty and desire, the king she’s meant to wed, and the assassin charged with hunting them both down.
Publisher’s Description: King Maddox Kyronan’s fire magic has earned him a ruthless reputation on the battlefield, but now his land is slowly burning. Ky’s only chance to save his people is to enter a marriage alliance with the neighboring nation of Astranza, and hope that their royal family’s power to manipulate the weather will help his kingdom flourish once more. He just needs to ensure no one finds out how this blaze began.
With enemies advancing on Astranza, Princess Jory’s home needs the protection of the fearsome warrior king, but she is hiding a dangerous secret: her family’s magic is fading. Tempting as it is to reject her duties and run away with her childhood friend, Asher, Jory knows that she is the kingdom’s last hope. When she meets her intended, Jory is surprised to discover that beneath Ky’s daunting exterior is a compassionate and sharp-witted man who sets her heart aflame. But what will he do when he realizes she’s deceiving him?
Asher’s done what he must to survive, even if that means getting his hands dirty. Once a young nobleman in Astranza’s palace, where he and Jory caused mischief together, now he’s part of the Hunter’s Guild, employing much darker skills. When a lucrative job comes his way, Asher can’t say no—until he discovers the targets. Someone wants Ky and Jory dead. With the Guild watching, Asher must decide what he’s willing to do to protect the woman he loves.
The Bone Raiders by Jackson Ford
Release Date: August 12 from Orbit
Why We’re Excited: A rollicking, gritty old-school epic fantasy about a group of skeletal-armor-wearing raiders who decide to trade their horses for dragons in their battle to save their ancestral hunting grounds. Crackling dialogue and excellent found family vibes.
Publisher’s Description: You don’t f*ck with the Rakada. The people living in the grasslands of the Tapestry call them the Bone Raiders, from their charming habit of displaying the bones of those they kill on their armour. But being a raider is tough these days. There’s a new Great Khan in the Tapestry. He plans to use his sizeable military to get rid of the raider clans. And then there are the huge fire-breathing lizards that are straying into the grasslands a little too often these days.
Sayana is a raider scout. She knows that to protect their way of life, she needs do something drastic. Like convincing her clan to ride those huge lizards, instead of horses. Sayana doesn’t know how to do it without being eaten and/or cooked alive, but she’d better figure it out fast – or she and her clan, along with every other raider in the Tapestry, will be wiped out.
Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher
Release Date: August 19 from Tor Books
Why We’re Excited: At this point, after books like Nettle & Bone, Thornhedge, and A Sorceress Comes to Call, you could tell me that T. Kingfisher was writing a fantasy take on the post office, and I’d line up on release day to read it. But a dark Snow White reimagining? Be still my heart.
Publisher’s Description: Healer Anja knows little of politics but much of poisons. When she is summoned to treat the mysterious illness afflicting the king’s daughter, she finds herself against the clock, desperate to track down the source of the poison killing Princess Snow. But the chance discovery of a strange alternate world inside a magic mirror leads Anja to darker discoveries, including what really happened to Snow’s dead sister, Rose, and why their mother seemingly went mad and cut out her heart.
Aided by a taciturn bodyguard, a narcissistic cat, and a late Renaissance understanding of the scientific method, Anja must navigate the mysteries of the mirror world before the dark queen that dwells within rises to threaten them all.
Voidwalker by S. A. Maclean
Release Date: August 19 from Orbit
Why We’re Excited: A monster romantasy from the author of cozy fantasy The Phoenix Keeper is a delightful swerve that should fascinate us all.
Publisher’s Description: Fionamara is a smuggler. Antal is the reason her people fear the dark. Fi ferries contraband between worlds, stockpiling funds and stolen magic to keep her village self-sufficient, free from the blood sacrifices humans have paid to Antal’s immortal species for centuries.
Only legends whispered through the pine forests recall a time when things were different, before one world shattered into many, and the flesh-devouring beasts crept from the cracks between realities, with their sable antlers and slender tails, lethal claws and gleaming fangs. Now, mortal lives are food to pacify their carnivorous overlords, exchanged for feudal protection, and the precious silver energy that fuels everything from transport to weaponry.
When Fi gets planted with a stash of smuggled energy, a long-lost flame recruits her for a reckless heist that escalates into a terrorist bombing – and a coup against the reigning immortals, with Fi’s home caught in the crossfire.
She’s always known the dangers of her trade – and of the power she’s wielded since childhood, allowing her to see the secret doors between dimensions, to walk the Void itself. But nothing could have prepared her for crossing paths with Antal. For the deal she’ll have to make with him, a forced partnership to reclaim his city that begins as a desperate bid for survival, only to grow into something far more dangerous.
The Cruel Dawn by Rachel Howzell Hall
Release Date: August 19 from Entangled: Red Towar Books
Why We’re Excited: The sequel to Rachel Howzell Hall’s The Last One and the conclusion to her Vallendor series, this sweeping romantasy picks up right where its predecessor left off, as Kai finds herself haunted by a past she can’t remember, betrayed by everyone she trusted, and determined to save her kingdom from a traitorous god.
Publisher’s Description: Kaivara Megidrail was once worshipped as the Grand Defender of Vallendor―until betrayal, punishment, and exile left her Diminished. Now, the realm she abandoned teeters on the edge of collapse. Monsters roam free. Gods whisper in shadows. And one man―Jadon Wake, prince, blacksmith, liar―may be the key to her salvation…or her final ruin.
Haunted by the past, hunted by divine enemies, and armed with only fractured Memories and an unrelenting will, Kaivara must choose: reclaim her power and face the truth about Jadon, or watch Vallendor fall to a traitorous god’s rising.
The realm called her a destroyer. This time, they’ll learn what she was truly made for.
Dot Slash Magic by Liz Shipton
Release Date: August 19 from Angry Robot
Why We’re Excited: Any book that’s described as perfect for fans of I Am Number Four, Wreck It Ralph, and A Court of Thorns and Roses will always grab my attention. Urban fantasy meets dystopian cyberpunk is maybe something this genre could use some more of.
Publisher’s Description: When twenty-something coder Seven Jones goes back to school at a community college in San Diego, the last thing she wants is to join some stupid club. And the last thing she expects is to walk into an underground magic club. Like, actual wizards and shit.
Seven reluctantly joins the motley crew of magic weirdos and discovers her own power. But she struggles to control it…until she figures out how to channel her magic through an artificially intelligent computer program.
Unfortunately, there is literally nothing Seven’s new friends hate more than AI, and when a student mysteriously turns up dead, blame falls on Seven. Is her “creepy artificial magic” summoning terrifying creatures to hunt students? Or is someone trying to frame her?
With only one person – cute ex-Navy seal Logan – on her side, Seven fights monsters (Dragon? Check. Kraken? Check) while struggling to convince everyone that her AI has nothing to do with them.
But how can she convince her peers when she isn’t totally convinced herself?
The Damned King by Justin L. Anderson
Release Date: August 19 from Orbit
Why We’re Excited: The third installment in Justin Lee Anderson’s old school high fantasy series (that is—surprise!—not a trilogy!) is full of intense battles and difficult character choices, as Aranok and his companions fight to defend Traverlyn from the demonic Thakhati.
Publisher’s Description: The eternal light keeping demons at bay has been extinguished and Eidyn’s last bastion is under brutal siege. Aranok and his allies draw the final battle lines as the war for the kingdom nears its end. With death threatening from every shadow and truth itself at stake, Eidyn’s defenders must put aside their grudges and come together. But is it possible to save everyone when some prefer the lie?
House of Dusk by Deva Fagan
Release Date: August 26 from DAW
Why We’re Excited: There is no world in which I am not racing to read a sapphic romantasy that has fire-wielding nuns and a slow-burn romance between a princess who sees the future and her bodyguard (who also happens to be an undercover spy).
Publisher’s Description: Ten years ago, Sephre left behind her life as a war hero and took holy vows to seek redemption for her crimes, wielding the flames of the Phoenix to purify the dead. But as corpses rise, a long-dead god stirs, and shadowy serpents creep from the underworld, she has no choice but to draw on the very past she’s been trying so hard to forget.
Orphaned by the same war Sephre helped win, Yeneris has trained half her life to be the perfect spy, a blade slipped deep into the palace of her enemies. Undercover as bodyguard to Sinoe, a princess whose tears unleash prophecy, Yeneris is searching for the stolen bones of a saint. Her growing attraction to the princess, however, is proving dangerous, and Yeneris struggles to balance her feelings for Sinoe with her duty to her people.
As gods are reborn and spirits destroyed, the world trembles on the edge of a second cataclysm. Sephre must decide whether to be bound by her past or to forge a better future, even if it means renouncing her vows and accepting a new and terrible power. Meanwhile, when the real enemy makes their bid for power, Yeneris must find a way to remain true to her full self and save both her mission and her heart.
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang
Release Date: August 28 from Harper Voyager
Why We’re Excited: Any new book from the author of Babel and Yellowface automatically has our attention, but this weird combination of Dante’s Inferno and Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi that follows two rival PhD students who must descend into Hell to rescue the soul of their advisor sounds particularly intriguing.
Publisher’s Description: Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world.
That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.
Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams….
Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the very same conclusion.
With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across Hell to save a man they don’t even like.
But Hell is not like the storybooks say, Magick isn’t always the answer, and there’s something in Alice and Peter’s past that could forge them into the perfect allies…or lead to their doom.
Lacy Baugher Milas writes about Books and TV at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter and Bluesky at @LacyMB
