Goodreads’ Greatest Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books for April 2023

Goodreads has announced the list of novels due out in April that its members are most excited about. The list below is for the science fiction and fantasy genres only. For me, The remarkable retirement of Edna Fisher it looks pretty funny and The big and the thin looks interesting. What are you looking forward to reading next month?

Braid of the Emerald Sea

• Author: Brandon Sanderson

• Illustrator: Howard Lyons

• Published on April 4th

The only life Tress has known on her home island in an emerald green ocean has been simple, with the simple pleasures of collecting mugs brought by sailors from distant lands and listening to stories told by her friend Charlie. But when his father takes him on a journey to find a bride and disaster strikes, Tress must hide out on a ship and seek out the Witch of the deadly Midnight Sea. Among the oceans of spores where pirates abound, can Tress leave his simple life behind and make her own place by sailing a sea where a single drop of water can mean instant death?

In the lives of puppets

• Author: TJ Klune

• Published on April 25th

In a strange little house built in the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots: the paternal inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nursing machine and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, also lives there. They are family, hidden and safe.

The day Vic retrieves and repairs an unknown android labeled “HAP,” he learns of a dark past shared between Hap and Gio, a past of hunting humans.

When Hap unknowingly alerts the robots from Gio’s former life of their location, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. Then together, the rest of Vic’s reunited family must travel across an unforgiving, otherworldly country to save Gio from being deactivated or worse, reprogrammed.

Along the way to rescue Gio, amid conflicting feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for himself: can he accept love with bonds?

Field Zero

• Author: Michelle Min Sterling

• Published on April 4th

In the far north of Canada is Camp Zero, an American construction project that holds many secrets.

Desperate to help her climate-displaced Korean immigrant mother, Rose agrees to travel to Camp Zero and spy on its architect in exchange for housing. She arrives at the same time as another newcomer, a college professor named Grant, who is determined to escape his wealthy family’s dark legacy. Gradually, they realize that there is more to the architect than previously thought, and a disturbing mystery lurks beneath the camp’s surface. At the same time, rumors abound of an elite group of female soldiers living and working at a nearby Cold War-era climate research station. What are they doing there? And who leads them?

Ascension Day

• Author: Nicholas Binge

• Published on April 25th

A huge snow mountain has appeared in the Pacific Ocean. No one knows exactly when it appeared, exactly how big it might be, or how to explain its existence. When Harold Tunmore, a mysterious phenomena scientist, is contacted by a shadowy organization to help investigate, he has no idea what he’s getting into as he and his team head for the mountain.

The higher Harold’s team climbs, the less sense things make. Time moves differently, turning minutes into hours and hours into days. Between the biting cold of the highest altitude, the climbers’ limbs numb and the memories of their lives before the mountain started to fade. Paranoia quickly turns to violence within the crew and ancient slithering creatures chase them through the snow. However, as the dangers increase, the mountain’s mystery forces them to its peak, where they are certain to find their answers. Have they stumbled upon the greatest scientific discovery known to man or the seeds of their own demise?

Framed by the discovery of Harold Tunmore’s unsent letters to his family and the chilling and provocative story they tell, Ascension considers the limits of science and faith and examines both the beautiful and the unnerving sides of human nature.

Heaven without constraints

• Author: Fonda Lee

• Published on April 11th

Esther’s family was torn apart when a manticore killed her mother and little brother, leaving her with nothing but her father’s painful silence and a single, overwhelming need to slay the monsters that have taken over her family.

Esther’s path takes her to the King’s Royal Mews, where the giant rocs of legend are flown to hunt manticores by their brave and devoted ruhkers. Paired with a fledgling roc named Zahra, Esther finds purpose and acclaim by dedicating herself to a calling that demands absolute sacrifice and a creature who will never love her back. The terrifying partnership between woman and roc takes Esther not only on the hunt for the empire’s most dangerous manticore, but on a journey of perseverance and acceptance.

A little desperate glory

• Author: Emily Tesh

• Published on April 11th

As long as we live, the enemy will fear us.

All her life Kyr has been training for the day when she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station along with the last shreds of humanity, she prepares to face Wisdom, the all-powerful reality-shaping weapon that gave the Majodas their victory over humanity.

I am what is left. They are what must survive. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. But when her Command delivers her brother to certain death and relegates her to asylum to bear her children until she dies trying to her, she knows she must take mankind’s vengeance into her own hands.

Along with her brother’s brilliant but seditious friend and a lone, captive alien, she escapes everything she’s ever known into a universe far more complicated than she’s been taught, and far more wondrous than she could have imagined.

The War of the Bone Shards

• Author: Andrew Stewart

• Published on April 18th

Lin Sukai has won his first victory as Emperor, but the future of the Phoenix Empire hangs in the balance and Lin is perilously low on allies.

While its own governors plot treachery, the Shardless Few renew hostilities. Worse, Lin learns that her old nemesis Nisong has joined forces with the rogue Alanga, Ragan. Both seek her death.

Yet the hopes reside in history. Legend tells of seven mythical swords, forged in past centuries. If Lin can find them before his enemies, he may still be able to turn the tide.

If he fails, the Sukai dynasty and the entire empire will fall.

The remarkable retirement of Edna Fisher

• Author: EM Anderson

• Published on April 21st

You are never too old for adventure.

When you’re a geriatric armed with nothing but common sense and knitting needles, keeping a sorcerer from wiping out an entire organization of dragon fighters is a tall order. No one understands why Edna Fisher, 83, is the Chosen One, destined to save the Knights from a dragon-riding sorcerer bent on destroying them. After all, Edna has never wielded a magical weapon, faced a dragon, or cast a spell. And everyone knows that the Wizards Council always chooses a teenage girl, as the vengeful girl ready to snatch Edna’s fate from right under her nose.

However, Edna jumps at the opportunity to leave the nursing home. With her son long dead in the service of the Knights, she is determined to save dragonfighters like him and make sure other mothers don’t suffer the same loss as she did. But as Edna learns of the abuses in the ranks and the Warlock’s history as a Knight, she questions whether it’s really the Warlock who needs to be stopped or the Knights she’s trying to save.

The scourge among the stars

• Author: Ness Brown

• Published on April 4th

As acting captain of the starship Calypso, Jacklyn Albright is responsible for keeping the last members of humanity alive as they limp back to Earth from their ancestors’ failed colony on a distant planet.

Faced with constant threats of starvation and destruction in the dangerous minefield of interstellar space, Jacklyn’s crew has reached breaking point. As unrest begins to spread across the ship’s Wards, a new threat emerges, killing the crew members in a grim and bloody way.

Jacklyn and her team must hunt down the ship’s unknown intruder if they have any hope of making it back to their solar system alive.

The big and the thin

• Author: Chana Porter

• Published on April 18th

In the quaint religious town of Seagate, abstaining from food brings you closer to God.

But Beatrice Bolano is hungry. She longs for the forbidden: butter, flambé, marzipan. As Seagate takes ever more extreme measures to regulate every calorie consumed by her citizens, Beatrice must make a choice: give up her secret passion for cooking or leave the only community she’s known.

Elsewhere, Reiko Rimando has left her humble roots for a college tech scholarship in the big city. A flawless student, she’s poised for success… until her school withdraws her funds, leaving her facing a mountain of debt or a humiliating homecoming. But she Reiko has ceased to be at the mercy of the system. She creates a third path, outside the law.

With the guidance of a mysterious cookbook written centuries ago by a scullery maid, Beatrice and Reiko each seize a life of freedom, something more easily imaginable than achievable in a world dominated by catastrophic corporate greed.