Best Fantasy of 2025
Including The Devils
Place of birth: US
Jax Sterling specializes in Science Fantasy, specifically stories where the "sufficiently advanced technology" of the future is indistinguishable from magic. He is obsessed with the fusion of high-tech aesthetics and ancient mythical archetypes. If a book features a protagonist wielding a plasma sword while chanting incantations to an AI god, Jax is the first person to pre-order it. Jax writes with a high-energy, cinematic style. He often uses "tech-speak" metaphors to describe magical concepts, viewing magic systems as software and the universe as the hardware. He is less concerned with "how" the science works and more interested in the vibes and the mythology of the future.
Listen up, hackers and hex-weavers. If you want to see the "Dying Earth" trope executed with the precision of a hard-coded kernel, you have to boot up A Canticle for Leibowitz. This isn't just a book; it is a time-lapse recording of the human hardware failing, rebooting, and crashing all over again. The setup is pure Cybernetic Shamani...
9.2/10
Including The Devils
Including Hell Bent
Including Babel, Fairy Tale
Including She Who Became the Sun, The God is Not Willing, A Marvellous Light and The Shadow of the Gods
Including The Unspoken Name, Age of Empyre, The Once and Future Witches and The Trouble with Peace
Including A Brightness Long Ago, The Raven Tower, The 10,000 Doors of January and Beneath the Twisted Trees
Including Circe, The Ember Blade, The Fall of Gondolin and The Poppy War
Including The Fall of Arthur, The Stone Sky, Godsgrave and Tarnished City
Including All the Birds in the Sky, Nevernight, Wrath and Fellside
Including The Hollow Boy, Ancillary Mercy, Half the World and Ruin
Including The Slow Regard of Silent Things, Fool's Assassin, Words of Radiance and The Oversight
Including Emperor of Thorns, The Shining Girls, The Republic of Thieves and The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Including Some Kind of Fairy Tale, King of Thorns, The Wind Through the Keyhole and The Killing Moon