Best Speculative Novels of 2025

Here are my favorite novels (and one novella) of the year. 

The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir

It’s been a long time since I read a book in one sitting, but this compact novella about a woman with unexplained injuries and fatigue, who discovers she’s been walking tens of thousands of steps in her sleep, wouldn’t let me go.

As Iðunn struggles to stop these episodes, padlocking herself in her apartment only to find the lock broken and her hands bloody the next morning, she becomes convinced someone is taking over her body at night.

But what does this other woman want? What is she doing during those lost, dark hours? And what if “she” is only in her head? When the blood left behind one morning isn’t her own, Iðunn knows she must discover the answer, no matter how frightening.

This brief book, translated by Mary Robinette Kowal, is at times sad, funny, extremely relatable, then bizarrely surreal. I loved its use of blank pages and brief chapters to capture the woman’s increasingly unhinged mindset and spotty memory. And it’s dramatic ending–which is as much a literary puzzle as a neat conclusion, leaving clues for the reader to assemble themselves—stayed with me for days.  

The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling

The Starving Saints is the strangest and most original novel I read this year, a fever dream – strike that, a fever nightmare – set in a medieval castle full of people slowly starving while under military siege.

I loved the character of Phosyne, a former nun and madwoman ordered by the king to conjure a miracle—or else. I was delighted by Ser Voyne, a loyal knight who is every inch the strong, honorable war hero (and also a woman) tasked with keeping Phosyne safe and focused on her work as the castle descends into backstabbing and violence.

But where this historical horror novel really sunk its teeth in me was when The Constant Lady and her creepy Saints appear with their too-good-to-be-true promises to help. The unholy feasts that unfold while the castle falls under their spell are as stomach-turning as they are fascinating.

Exactly how do Phosyne, Ser Voyne and a servant named Trelia work together to defeat this ancient evil? Don’t sweat the details. Just hold on, try not to lose your lunch, and enjoy every bonkers moment of it.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

On a desolate island not far from the Antarctic, a widow and his three children struggle to maintain the world’s largest seed bank. Then a massive storm hits, threatening to drown the precious seeds and washing a mysterious woman up on shore.

The father, Dominic, suspects the injured woman is hiding something–but so is his family. His eldest son has a dangerous temper; the youngest sees ghosts; and his daughter bears a painful secret. The still-grieving Dominic is willing to do anything to protect them.

As the woman, Rowan, is nursed back to health, she and Dominic begin to fall for each other despite their mutual misgivings. But when Rowan discovers the family has been lying about her missing husband, a former researcher at the seed bank, she must decide where her loyalties lay once and for all. Because the waters are rising, the seeds meant to re-plant the world are drowning, and not everyone will survive the deluge.

While this novel was not marketed as speculative fiction, I was enchanted by its near-future setting and understated supernatural elements, which serve as an all-too believable backdrop to its mystery plot.

McConaghy always delivers a twisty ending, and this one did not disappoint. But what I think she does best is explore the intersection of ecological themes and personal relationships: how to let go of the places and people we’ve lost, how to learn to trust and rebuild again, how to maintain hope amid so much destruction and pain.

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Everything is a mess, but somehow this sci-fi novel got me to laugh through the dumpster fire that was 2025. It’s a fun, quick read despite its dark subject matter, perfect for pessimists (realists?) with limited bandwidth right now.

In it, a mild-mannered robot valet named Charles inexplicably murders his human owner. Charles, who renames himself UnCharles, embarks on a quest to discover what’s gone awry with his programming (which should have prevented killing his master) and to locate a new human to serve.

But once outside the manicured neighborhood of his former, ultra-rich owner, he discovers a dystopian landscape where most humans are dead and robots like UnCharles are trapped in an endless loop of nonsensical commands upheld by a crumbling bureaucracy with no one (except perhaps a godlike AI?) at the helm. Thus arrives the real challenge: Uncharles must figure out how to find purpose in life when the people he was created for no longer exist.

Full of satire and wry, philosophical musings about sentience, as well as the meaning of life, war and religion, Service Model is an adventure that makes you both laugh and think.