They’re looking good. Really good.

In honor of 2020 being a strange year, I’m looking ahead to 2021 for ways to grow that ever-growing TBR pile.

Thread of Power trilogy: V. E. Schwab

She’s only getting better. I loved Vicious and Vengeful, and adored the Shades of Magic trilogy, so I’m excited to see Schwab’s back with a new series! The new series will be a trilogy called the Threads of Power trilogy, and will be set in the same world as the Shades of Magic series, featuring new leads, plus the entire cast from Conjuring of Light.

The Iron Season (The Golem and the Jinni #2) by Helene Wecker

The Golem and the Jinni is one of my all-time favorite fantasy books. Part two of the Golem and Jinni saga was slated for a 2020 release, but has been updated to 2021. The novel is set during the World War I era and continues the story of Chava (the golem) and Ahmad (the jinni) who encounter other beings of their own kind, only to realize that their close ties to human beings have forever altered them.

Dark Rise by C.S. Pacat

New author for me, Pacat’s first YA series is set in an alternate London, and follow “the heroes and villains of a long-forgotten war who are being reborn, ushering in a dangerous new age of magic.”

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

Continuing with the surge of Asian-themed books the past few years, She who Became the Sun is set in China, 1354, after her family’s death, an iron-willed peasant girl steals her brother’s identity and fate of greatness in order to survive. Defying the bounds of gender with cunning and ingenuity, her ambition takes her from monk to leader of the rebellion against China’s Mongol rulers. But her rise brings her face to face with the empire’s most feared general: a eunuch as trapped by his gender as she is free of hers. it’s being pitched as A Song of Achilles mets Mulan.

The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling

A good haunted house story is most everyone’s cup of tea. A gothic horror about a young woman who makes a marriage of convenience and soon finds herself trapped in her new husband’s decrepit and possibly haunted mansion, and spirals down a dangerous path of ritual magic in an effort to save them both.

The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid

I’m loving the draw from multicultural folklores in books recently. Inspired by Hungarian history and Jewish mythology, a story of magic and faith, storytelling and tradition, belonging and violence, in which a pagan woman is betrayed by her village and thrust into a hostile world where a vengeful cleric seeking religious purity has risen to power.

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

Imprisoned by her dictator brother, Malini spends her days in isolation in the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of the powerful, magical deathless waters — but is now little more than a decaying ruin.
Priya is a maidservant…She is happy to be an anonymous drudge, so long as it keeps anyone from guessing the dangerous secret she hides.
But when Malini accidentally bears witness to Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled…Together, they will change the fate of an empire.