Science Fiction/Fantasy Too Legit to Quit: 5 SFF Books I Hope To Read Before 2026 There's not much time to wrap up your reading years. What are the sci-fi and fantasy books you hope to get to before 2026? Dec 16, 2025 This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Liberty Hardy Senior Contributing Editor Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty Liberty Hardy Senior Contributing Editor Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty View All posts by Liberty Hardy Once again, try as I might, I failed to read every new science fiction and fantasy book that came out this year. Drat. The good news is that it means I still have lots of exciting books to pick up. And there’s a couple of weeks left before the end of the year, which gives me time to try and squeeze a few more in! I love challenging myself to reading more at the end of the year, for no reason other than it’s fun. The five books below are a few that caught my eye but I didn’t manage to read yet, and will probably be the ones I pick up first. I thought I would share them with you in case you’re looking for new books to read too. Yay, books! Fate’s Bane by C. L. Clark In this sapphic fantasy, two young lovers discover a source of magic in a hidden spring, which could finally bring peace to the warring clans of their world. But greedy men and other clans want the power for themselves, which might mean tragedy for the young lovers. (I also need to pick up the conclusion to Clark’s Magic of the Lost series, which came out this year too!) All Access members, read on for four more SFF books I want to finish in 2025. The White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell This speculative novel follows an art appraiser named Eve in London in the early twenty-first century. There she meets an elderly gentleman named Max who seems so familiar to her. But then there’s also an Eve and Max a century earlier, a young couple lost in time, staying at The White Octopus Hotel in the Swiss Alps… When We Were Real by Daryl Gregory In this wild-sounding novel, two friends embark on a week-long bus tour to visit all the “physics-defying glitches and geographic miracles.” They popped up around North America several years earlier, after it was revealed that the world was just a simulation. Along with a bus full of eccentric strangers, the two friends tour these anomalies, as they head toward the final stop, which might hold the secret of the simulation. These Memories Do Not Belong to Us by Yiming Ma This novel is a statement on privacy and totalitarian governments. In this future world, where China is the only superpower, people’s memories can now be recorded and even shared. Which, of course, means that corporations are trying to exploit and profit from them, and the government is trying to control them. When the unnamed narrator inherits a cache of memories that have been banned, he will risk his life to share them with the world. Slow Gods by Claire North Finally, an epic space opera from the award-winning author of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August . Mawukana na-Vdnaze is unable to die, a situation that makes Maw something to be feared. It also makes Maw very useful as a pilot, a job that usually kills anyone who attempts it. In this universe where destruction, war, and death are everywhere, what is the point of living forever? And what does it really mean to live? Okay, star bits, now take the knowledge you have learned here today and use it for good, not evil. If you want to know more about books, I talk about books pretty much nonstop (when I’m not reading them), and you can hear me say lots of adjectives about them on the BR podcast All the Books! and on Instagram . Join All Access to read this article Get access to exclusive content and features with an All Access subscription on Book Riot. Unlimited access to exclusive bonus content Community features like commenting and poll participation Our gratitude for supporting the work of an independent media company Source: https://bookriot.com/sff-books-to-read-before-2026/