Best New Fantasy Books in September 2022

The hotly anticipated next book in the Locked Tomb series emerges from the dark this month, along with Stephen King’s pandemic preoccupation and reality plane-hopping. Here are our top picks for the best new fantasy books in September 2022.

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Type: Novel
Publisher: Tordotcom
Release date: September 13

Den of Geek says: Gideon the Ninth‘s characters and voice have made it a fandom favorite. The third book in the series comes with a lot of excitement and expectations.

Publisher’s summary: Her city is under siege.

The zombies are coming back.

And all Nona wants is a birthday party.

In many ways, Nona is like other people. She lives with her family, has a job at her local school, and loves walks on the beach and meeting new dogs. But Nona’s not like other people. Six months ago she woke up in a stranger’s body, and she’s afraid she might have to give it back.

The whole city is falling to pieces. A monstrous blue sphere hangs on the horizon, ready to tear the planet apart. Blood of Eden forces have surrounded the last Cohort facility and wait for the Emperor Undying to come calling. Their leaders want Nona to be the weapon that will save them from the Nine Houses. Nona would prefer to live an ordinary life with the people she loves, with Pyrrha and Camilla and Palamedes, but she also knows that nothing lasts forever.

And each night, Nona dreams of a woman with a skull-painted face…

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

Type: Novel
Publisher: Scribner
Release date: September 6

Den of Geek says: Stephen King’s pandemic novel was built on the vision of a tall, abandoned city. The result: a spooky, grounded portal fantasy filter through the master of horror’s unique lens.

Publisher’s summary: Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it.

Charlie starts doing jobs for Mr. Bowditch and loses his heart to Radar. Then, when Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe. What Bowditch knows, and has kept secret all his long life, is that inside the shed is a portal to another world.

Notorious Sorcerer by Davinia Evans

Type: Novel
Publisher: Orbit
Release date: September 13

Den of Geek says: A complicated magic systems and characters deeply embedded in their world of rival gangs, glittering alchemy and layered planes of existence.

Publisher’s summary: Welcome to Bezim, where sword-slinging bravi race through the night and rich and idle alchemists make magic out of mixing and measuring the four planes of reality.

Siyon Velo, Dockside brat turned petty alchemist, scrapes a living hopping between the planes to harvest ingredients for the city’s alchemists. But when Siyon accidentally commits an act of impossible magic, he’s catapulted into the limelight—which is a bad place to be when the planes start lurching out of alignment, threatening to send Bezim into the sea.

It will take a miracle to save the city. Good thing Siyon has pulled off the impossible before. Now he just has to master it.