I love mysteries, fantasies, and science fiction, so what could be better than a good murder mystery in a fantasy or science fiction setting? There are a number of those in my TBR pile, so it’s not surprising they figure heavily in this selection of recent speculative fiction books I’m looking forward to reading in 2023:
- The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard: A human scholar and a transport spaceship avatar join forces to solve a murder in a Vietnamese-flavoured interstellar society.
- A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys: Aliens arrive to save humanity—whether we want to be saved or not.
- The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd: A contemporary fantasy thriller about the power of maps.
- The Peacekeeper by B. L. Blanchard: A murder mystery with a Native American detective in an alternate history timeline where North America was never colonised.
- The Embroidered Book by Kate Heartfield: Imagine Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, and her sister, Maria Carolina, Queen of Naples, casting spells, and attempting to deal with the unintended consequences.
- The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal: The Thin Man in space, by the author of the Lady Astronaut series.
- Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher: A paladin, an assassin, a forger, and a scholar ride out of town. This is not the start of a joke. It is the start of an espionage mission with deadly serious stakes. By the same author as The Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking.
- The Demi-Wolf and the Hunter by Amberley Martin: A fairy-tale mashup of Macbeth with Beauty and the Beast, and the sequel to The Rogue and the Peasant.