Top New Fantasy Books in October 2021

Magic and adventure await in the hottest fantasy book releases in October 2021 … with some spooky horror flavor. Tis the season.

Flowers for the Sea by Zin Rocklyn

Type: Novella
Publisher: Tordotcom
Release date: Oct. 19

Den of Geek says: This hotly anticipated horror-fantasy has created both discomfort and wonder in early reviewers. We’re enjoying the emergence of the “Black mermaids” subgenre.

Publisher’s summary: Survivors from a flooded kingdom struggle alone on an ark. Resources are scant, and ravenous beasts circle. Their fangs are sharp.

Among the refugees is Iraxi: ostracized, despised, and a commoner who refused a prince, she’s pregnant with a child that might be more than human. Her fate may be darker and more powerful than she can imagine.

Zin E. Rocklyn’s extraordinary debut is a lush, gothic fantasy about the prices we pay and the vengeance we seek.

Buy Flowers for the Sea by Zin Rocklyn.

Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood

Type: Novel
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Release date: Oct. 19

Den of Geek says: Gothic fantasy in a unique setting set this one apart. Note that this one sits on the line between adult and YA fantasy.

Publisher’s summary: Andromeda is a debtera―an exorcist hired to cleanse households of the Evil Eye. She would be hired, that is, if her mentor hadn’t thrown her out before she could earn her license. Now her only hope of steady work is to find a Patron―a rich, well-connected individual who will vouch for her abilities.

When a handsome young heir named Magnus Rochester reaches out to hire her, she takes the job without question. Never mind that he’s rude and demanding and eccentric, that the contract comes with a number of outlandish rules… and that almost a dozen debtera had quit before her. If Andromeda wants to earn a living, she has no choice.

But she quickly realizes this is a job like no other, with horrifying manifestations at every turn, and that Magnus is hiding far more than she has been trained for. Death is the most likely outcome if she stays, the reason every debtera before her quit. But leaving Magnus to live out his curse alone isn’t an option because―heaven help her―she’s fallen for him.

Stunningly romantic, Lauren Blackwood’s heartstopping debut, Within These Wicked Walls, ushers in an exciting new fantasy voice.

Buy Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood.

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow

Type: Novel
Publisher: Tordotcom
Release date: Oct. 5

Den of Geek says: Fairy tale retellings meet weird portal fantasy in this illustrated story.

Publisher’s summary: USA Today bestselling author Alix E. Harrow’s A Spindle Splintered brings her patented charm to a new version of a classic story. Featuring Arthur Rackham’s original illustrations for The Sleeping Beauty, fractured and reimagined.

It’s Zinnia Gray’s twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it’s the last birthday she’ll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no-one has lived past twenty-one.

Her best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia’s last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate.

Read A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow.