Well. Around twenty, anyway.

The book I’m currently reading is Iron Flame (Rebecca Yarrow), second book in the Empyrean series. I’m on page 40 and the book enjoys a bountiful 637 pages, so I conclude that I’m not finishing it today without heroic effort, effort which I am disinclined to provide just to increase this year’s book count by one. So I can put this year’s book list to bed.

I read 69* new-to-me books in 2025. That’s low for me. I’m usually up over a hundred. It seems eventually mental health struggles will affect one’s reading habits. Anyway, the number isn’t the point. Maybe in 2026 I’ll be reading books like a fiend, but they’re mostly rereads or really long books that I’ve been meaning to get to. Kristin Lavransdatter and Infinite Jest. And my final count will be like twenty. That would be fine.

Here are the best books I read in 2025, loosely ranked from less best to best, with commentary where available.

Hemlock and Silver (T. Kingfisher) Kingfisher is a fantasy machine these days, keeping ’em coming good and fast. This one’s up to her usual standards but I wasn’t really feeling the poison-and-mirror themes.

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies (Alison Goodman) I had to look this one up to remember which one it was. It’s one of these books you get a lot of these days, with a plucky heroine turning this or that benighted historical period into something we’d like better (complimentary). This one’s set in the Regency era, and is particularly energetic.

All the Birds in the Sky (Charlie Jane Anders) I suspect Charlie Jane Anders may be good at this, and I will have to investigate her bibliography more deeply.

The Tainted Cup; A Drop of Corruption (Robert Jackson Bennett) I’m a sucker for a Nero Wolfe pastiche, which this turns out not exactly to be, but it’ll do until one comes along. I’m not in love with this world, with its militaristic society, sea monsters, and biotech magic, but they’re well-written fantasy mysteries, so I will overlook much.

Wild Cards: House Rules (George R.R. Martin, ed.) The Wild Cards series has gone pretty far from its roots to get to this one, involving strange goings on in a mysterious house off the English coast, but I’m committed to Wild Cards for life, and I’ve never regretted it.

The House in the Cerulean Sea (T.J. Klune) I was hoping for something more, I don’t know, fanciful, fairy-taleish, than this found-family romance, but that’s not the book’s fault; the book’s perfectly good.

To Love and Be Wise (Josephine Tey) I may have more to say about this one in a separate article, but it’s a well-crafted Golden Age murder-mystery, only without a murder. That’s not often done.

The Averoigne Chronicles (Clark Ashton Smith) I had long been curious about Smith’s fantasy stories set in pseudo-medieval France, and I finally got the chance to snap them all up in one volume. Summary: weird! In a good way.

Advocate (Daniel M. Ford) Book Three of Ford’s Warden series, which I’ve been enjoying. I hope there are more, because the story of Aelis is clearly not over.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January (Alix E. Harrow) You’ve got to love that title. Promises a lot. And the book mostly delivers, even if it is kind of a conventional exercise for contemporary fantasy.

Written on the Dark (Guy Gavriel Kay) I’ve described Kay as the greatest living fantasy writer in English, and this book, an adventure in medieval France (it was a medieval-France kind of year for me) strengthens his case yet again.

James (Percival Everett) I read this at around the same time I read Big Jim and the White Boy (David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson). They’re both retellings of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of Jim. And both quite good; the only reason the Walker and Anderson doesn’t appear on this list is because it’s a comic book, and this list is for prose. (Nothing against comic books. I love comic books. They’re great.) It’s a tribute to TAoHF that people consider it worth reinterpreting in this way and creating books this good in reaction to it.

Fourth Wing (Rebecca Yarros) YA fantasy about a girl who becomes a dragonrider. Like with everything that’s been done a thousand times, all you have to do to stand out from the crowd is to do it well.

Woodworking (Emily St. James) Much-praised novel about a trans woman trying to figure things out and getting reluctant help from the trans girl who’s one of her students. It’s a really good read.

Space Oddity (Cat Valente) Sequel to the previous Space Opera, which was also great. Tons of fun in a Douglas Adams kind of way.

The Outskirter’s Secret; The Lost Steersman; The Language of Power (Rosemary Kirstein) I don’t know how I got this far in life without knowing about this series. I have taken to describing it as, “It’s pretending to be fantasy for people who like science fiction, but really it’s science fiction for people who like fantasy.” I hope Kirstein manages to finish the last two books before too long.

A Gentleman and a Thief (Dean Jobb) The only nonfiction book on this list. It’s the biography of Arthur Barry, the great Jazz Age jewel thief, and it’s wonderful.

The Bright Sword (Lev Grossman) Grossman has added a new entry to the Arthurian canon with this one. I read it in February and suspected at the time that it was going to be the best thing I read all year, and so it was. If you’re into King Arthur at all, this is one you have to read.

There!

Can’t wait to see what 2026 brings.

*Acknowledge.