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

It’s a new month and Goodreads has shared their list of the most anticipated sci-fi and fantasy novels coming out in August. I’m sorry but Stone doors it is not yet in the list. If I had to rank these titles by their covers, the most interesting to me would be Forged from blood Of Ehigbor Okosun OR Medusa’s sisters Of Lauren JA Bear. What books are you excited to read this month?

The one who drowned the world

• Author: Shelley Parker Chan

• Published on August 22nd

How much would you give to win the world?

Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, is riding the wave after his victory that wrested southern China from its Mongol overlords. Now he burns with a new desire: to seize the throne and crown himself emperor.

But Zhu isn’t the only one with imperial ambitions. Her neighbor in the south, the courtesan Madam Zhang, wants the throne for her husband, and she’s strong enough to wipe Zhu off the map. To stay in the game, Zhu will have to stake everything on a risky alliance with an old enemy: the talented but volatile eunuch general Ouyang, who has already sacrificed everything for a chance at revenge on his father’s killer, the Great Khan.

Unbeknownst to the Southerners, a new contender is even closer to the throne. Scorned scholar Wang Baoxiang has made his way into the capital, and his deadly court games threaten to bring the empire to its knees. Because Baoxiang also desires revenge: to become the most degenerate Great Khan in history and, in doing so, make fun of every value that his family of Mongol warriors loved more than him.

All contenders are determined to do whatever it takes.

The outlaws of the water

• Author: SL Huang

• Published on August 22nd

In jianghu, you break the law to make it your own.

Lin Chong is an expert weapons instructor, training the Emperor’s soldiers with sword and truncheon, battle ax and spear, spear and crossbow. Unlike more daring friends who flirt in defiance of imperial society’s unequal hierarchies and values, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job.

Until a powerful man with a vengeance snatches away that carefully constructed life.

Disgraced, tattooed like a criminal and on the run from an imperial marshal who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by Liangshan bandits. Mountain outlaws on the fringes of society, the Liangshan bandits proclaim a belief in justice: for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt empire would imprison or destroy. They are also murderers, thieves, smugglers and cutthroats.

Aside, they love like demons and fight like tigers. Together, they could bring down an empire.

Thorny hedge

• Author: T. Kingfisher

• Published on August 15th

There is a princess trapped in a tower. This is not her story.

Meet Toadlings. On the day of her birth, she was kidnapped from her family by fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of fairyland. Once adults, however, the fairies ask for the favor of returning to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn baby. Simple, right?

But nothing with fairies is ever simple.

Centuries later, a knight approaches a towering wall of brambles, where the thorns are as thick as your arm and as sharp as swords. He’s heard that there’s a curse here that needs to be broken, but it’s a curse the Toadling would do anything to keep…

My name is Iris

• Author: Brando Skyhorse

• Published on August 1st

Iris Prince is starting over. After years of estrangement, she and her husband are going through a surprisingly drama-free divorce. She has moved into a new house in a new neighborhood and plans to garden, café and spend more time with her nine-year-old daughter Melanie. It seems like her life is finally exactly what she wants it to be.

Then, one fine morning, she looks out of her kitchen window and sees that a wall has appeared in her backyard overnight. Where does it come from? What does it mean? And why does it seem to keep growing?

Meanwhile, a Silicon Valley startup has launched a high-tech wrist wearable called “The Band.” Billed as a convenient and environmentally friendly tool to help track local utilities and replace driver’s licenses and IDs, the Band is only available to those who can prove their parents’ citizenship. Suddenly, Iris, a proud second-generation Mexican-American, is now of “unverifiable ancestry,” unable to prove who she is, or where she and her undocumented loved ones belong. In a climate of fear and hate-fueled violence, Iris must face how far she will go to protect what matters most to her.

Forged from blood

• Author: Ehigbor Okosun

• Published 8 August

In the midst of a tyrannical regime and political encroachment, Dèmi wants only to survive: to avoid the suspicions of the non-magical Ajes who occupy her ancestral homeland of Ife; to escape the King’s brutal genocide of his people: darker-skinned, magic-wielding Oluso; and live peacefully with his secret mother as he learns to control the terrifying blood magic that is his birthright.

But when Dèmi’s misplaced trust costs her mother her life, survival gives way to revenge. She bides her time until the devious Lord Ekwensi grants her the perfect opportunity: kidnap the Aje prince, Jonas, and bargain for her life to save the remaining Oluso. With the help of her reckless childhood friend Colin, Dèmi succeeds, but discovers that she and Jonas share more than deadly secrets; her every moment she draws them further into a forbidden and unmistakable attraction, much to the distress of Colin and Dèmi.

The kidnapping is now a joint mission: to return to the king, help get Lord Ekwensi into the council, and strengthen the Oluso’s voice in a system designed to silence them. But the road is dangerous, Dèmi’s magic grows but is uncertain, and it is not clear if he can trust the two men at his side.

Medusa’s sisters

• Author: Lauren JA Bear

• Published 8 August

The end of the story is just the beginning…

Even before being transformed into Gorgons, Medusa and her sisters, Stheno and Euryale, were unique among the immortals. Intrigued by mortals and their lives, Medusa and her sisters entered the human world in search of a place to belong, but soon found themselves at the center of a dangerous Olympic rivalry and learned, too late, that love of a god is violent. .

Forgotten by history and belittled by poets, the other two Gorgons have never been anything but hideous witches, damned and condemned. But first they were sisters, and their journey from sea-born origins to the periphery of the Parthenon is a journey that rests, hidden, beneath their scales.

Monsters, but not monstrous, Stheno and Euryale will come forth for the first time to tell the story of how all three sisters have lived and been changed by each other, as they struggle with the inherent conflict between sisterhood and individuality. , myth and truth. , revenge and peace.

Bridge

• Author: Lauren Beukes

• Published 8 August

It was a game they played; other worlds, other lives. It was part of her mother’s great delusions. It wasn’t real. Unless it was…

Bridget Kittinger has always been paralyzed by choices. She has a lot to do with growing up in her mother’s long shadow, Jo, a troubled neuroscientist. Jo’s obsession with a mythical object, the ‘dream worm’, which she claims allowed travel to other worlds, led to their estrangement.

Now, suddenly, Jo is dead. And while packing up her house, Bridge finds a strange device buried in Jo’s freezer: the dreamworm. Against all odds, she actually can open the door to all other realities and even all other versions of herself. Could Bridge find who should be in this world, by visiting others? And could her Jo still be alive somewhere? But there’s a sinister cost to swapping places, and others hunt down the dreamworm that would kill to get his hands on it…

The Museum of Human History

• Author: Rebecca Bergman

• Published on August 1st

After nearly drowning, eight-year-old Maeve Wilhelm falls into a strange comatose state. As the years go by, it becomes clear that Maeve is not physically aging. A large cast of characters find themselves drawn to Maeve, each believing that her mysterious “sleep” holds the answers to their lives’ most pressing questions: Kevin Marks, museum owner obsessed with preservation; Monique Gray, refugee and performance artist; Lionel Wilhelm, an entomologist who dreamed of becoming an astrophysicist; and Evangeline Wilhelm, Maeve’s identical twin. While Maeve remains asleep, the characters grapple with mysterious new technology and medical advances that promise to ease anxiety and end pain, but instead cause devastating side effects.

The infinite end of the world

• Author: Ann Christy

• Published 8 August

Coco Wells hasn’t seen another living person since she was a teenager. All of Manhattan is reliving the same looping few seconds, minutes, or hours…and have been for years. Everything looks normal from a distance, but up close it’s a nightmare.

Coco is a survivor. He forages, reads, and most importantly, avoids loopers. They ignore her, but only as long as she is silent. He has learned the painful lesson that a broken ring can mean death.

After eight years of solitude, learning how to survive and precisely timing the loops that weave around the city, Coco wonders what lies beyond New York and what has become of the rest of the world.

As she leaves home for the first time, one question haunts her most of all:

“Am I the only one left?”

The Great Transition

• Author: Nick Fuller Googins

• Published on August 15th

What happens after you save the world?

In the near future, humanity has not avoided the worst of climate change: wildfires, rising oceans, mass migrations and skyrocketing inequalities have become the daily reality. But just when it seems like things can’t get any worse, surprisingly, a movement of workers, migrants and refugees inspires the world to unite, save the planet and rebuild a society for all. This is the Great Transition.

The teenager Emi Vargas was born after the Transition, in a utopia compared to the world known by previous generations. Her parents have suffered and sacrificed, playing key roles in The Great Transition, but now their marriage is deteriorating. And when Emi’s mother goes missing in the midst of a shocking new political upheaval, Emi’s illusion of comfort and security is shattered.

Alternating between Emi’s suspenseful search for her mother in the present and The Great Transition, when her mother and father battled climate devastation and fell in love, this stunning debut is an extraordinary story of struggle, change and hope.