Your Pre-Order Guide to 2017 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Sequels

The Black Elfstone (The Fall of Shannara #1), by Terry Brooks (June 6)
Technically this book opens a new series set in the Shannara universe, but since it’s also the start of a four-book run that will bring the four-decades-in-the-making epic to a close, it’s also kind of the sequel to end all sequels. A dark force is rising in the far north of the Four Lands, threatening to end a decades-long peace. As the invading hordes scorch the land with a type of magic never before seen, the High Druids send out a envoy to discover what they want and how they can be stopped. Meanwhile, Drisker Arc, an exiled former High Druid, survives two assassination attempts, and sets off with his magically gifted companion Tarsha to figure out who wants him dead. These seemingly disparate journeys will come to prove crucial to the fate and future of an entire world.

Raven Stratagem (Machineries of Empire #2), by Yoon Ha Lee (June 13)
Lee wowed us last year with his debut novel, Ninefox Gambit, a brilliantly off-beat and intricate space opera, the kind in which every detail has sprung from the mind of a master world-builder. It’s a proudly alien realm, in which the laws of physics give way to manipulations of a calendar. In Lee’s conception, the laws of reality are only as static as our agreed belief in them, and it can all break down when we move away from consensus. In the first book, A desperate leader allowed herself to be possessed by a ruthless and sociopathic tactician as a last resort means of putting down a catastrophic rebellion. In the sequel, that relationship goes further when Jedao, the tactician, takes total control in order to defend against an invasion.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones, by Seanan McGuire (June 13)
The mega-prolific McGuire has long since proven that she has a rare gift for blending genres and tones: in her stories of action, science fiction, and fantasy, she’s always done right by her lead characters, maintaining heart and humanity no matter how weird things get. And they can get pretty weird. Last year’s Every Heart a Doorway , which dealt with the aftermath of children’s return from literal fairytale worlds, was her most lyrical work yet, so we’re looking forward to the next Wayward Children book, this one telling the story of love and betrayal that led Jaqueline and Jillian to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.

Devil’s Due (Destroyermen #12), by Taylor Anderson (June 13)
Anderson’s series revolves around Captain Matt Reddy and the crew of the USS Walker, a ship transported from the Pacific during World War II, dropped into a strange, alternate-earth environment and caught up in a conflict between the Lemurians and the Grik. In the twelfth book in the popular run, Captain Reddy’s family has been taken by the insane Kurokawa, and he’s forced once again to decide between the greater war effort and his own personal conflict.

The Witchwood Crown, by Tad Williams (June 27)
Williams returned to the world of his Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series earlier this year with the standalone novel The Heart of What Was Lost. The original trilogy involved the continent of Osten Ard, a fantasy realm in the classic vein with elves, trolls, and humans vying for control. Prester John had united the humans, but a conflict between his sons brought chaos to the world. This latest begins a new series focusing on Morgan, son of the urchin who was the focus of the earlier books, who ultimately rose to be king.

July

The Unholy Consult (The Aspect-Emperor #4), by R. Scott Bakker (July 4)
This series, the second set in Bakker’s Second Apocalypse world, concludes with the fourth book. These are epic works of grimdark fantasy, full of political intrigue and big ideas, depicting a holy war in which one side is determined to usher in a God of ultimate destruction. We don’t know much about the concluding volume, but we’re excited to see how it all ends.

The Harbors of the Sun (Books of the Raksura #5), by Martha Wells (July 4)
Shape-shifter Moon was convinced that he was the only one of his kind. Until he learned that he wasn’t. Across four earlier books and two collections of short stories, the fantasy world of the Raksura has grown to include wildly varied landscapes and a seemingly endless number of creatures, but ultimately, its center has been the story of Moon fitting in and finding a family. This last volume of the series (for the foreseeable future, at least) promises a threat to the Raksuran civilization even greater than the vicious Fell, as well as a conclusion to the story of Moon and Jade.

The Reluctant Queen, by Sarah Beth Durst (July 4)
In Durst’s land of Renthia, introduced in The Queen of Blood, spirits are everywhere, and in everything. But they’re not friendly, happy spirits; they’re deeply malevolent, even deadly. Queen Daleina has used her strength to survive the spirits and hold them at bay. The only problem? She’s dying without an heir, and threatening to leave the land at the mercy of evil. There’s a simple woman living a simple life in the countryside who might fit the bill, but she’ll have to give up everything for a job she doesn’t want.

Dark Sky (Keiko #2), by Mike Brooks (July 11)
Mike Brooks’ outer-space heist series continues after last year’s fun debut, Dark Run. In the sequel, Ichabod Drift and his crew are split when they take a smuggling job on a mining planet. Part of the team winds up with miners, rebelling against poor treatment, and the other half sides with the authorities. A communications blackout means that they don’t even realize that they’re about to go to war with each other.

The Delirium Brief, by Charles Stross (July 11)
Bob Howard works in the Laundry, a secret agency in the British government that fights vicious and nasty creatures of pure evil that have entered into our world from beyond spacetime. There’s a welcome light touch to the series, as well as plenty of fighting and magic. It’s a fine time to jump onboard: the series has switched to a new publisher just as it enters a new phase of the story—having just been outed to the public, the Laundry is in the precarious position of being scrutinized by the public. At the same time, the agency is facing its ultimate threat: privatization by the British government.

Arabella and the Battle of Venus, by David D. Levine (July 18)
David D. Levine introduced the wonderfully swashbuckling Arabella Ashby in last year’s Arabella of Mars, winner of the 2016 Andre Norton Award. The alternate history found the British Empire striking out into the solar system under King William III, circa 1600. Arabella is a young English lady who grew up on a plantation on the red planet, but her adventurous spirit were deemed ill-suited to someone of her station. Bristling at the restrictions, and taking heed of a threat to her home, she dresses up as a boy and joins up with the crew of a ship that eventually finds itself embroiled in a war between England and France. The sequel finds her on the way to forbidding Venus to rescue her fiancé, Captain Singh, from a French prisoner-of-war camp.
 
August

Monster Hunter: Siege, by Larry Correia (August 1)
Correia’s addictively fun, action-packed series continues with its sixth installment. Monster Hunter International’s top agent, Owen Pitt, heads off on a rescue mission to save some fellow hunters in peril, and quickly becomes involved in the agency’s biggest operation yet. The men are being held in another dimension, a nightmare world accessible only via a dangerous journey through a radioactive war zone teeming with beasties and an ancient god who doesn’t take kindly to people violating his airspace.

The Stone Sky (Broken Earth #3), by N.K. Jemisin (August 15)
Jemisin’s The Fifth Season shook the genre in 2015, winning her a legion of new fans alongside major award recognition, and the sequel propelled the story of survival in a blighted, angry fantasy landscape to new, ever more jagged peaks. Obviously the concluding volume of the trilogy promises to be a seismic event. A mother and daughter struggle to determine the fate of the Orogenes as Essun intends to use the power that she’s inherited to bend the world into a shape where the people are free, while her daughter believes that the power’s corrupted source means that it can never be put to good purpose, no matter the intention. The entire trilogy has been about navigating the end of the world, pointedly questioning whether the end of all things is necessarily a bad thing when the world is a corrupted place.

The God Peak (The God Wave #2), by Patrick Hemstreet (August 22)
In The God Wave, a team of scientists messed around with the human brain and inadvertently created a group of superhumans. In the sequel, these godlike beings decide the best course of action is to wipe out their ancestors and inherit the earth. Three “Alphas,” ordinary people given telekinetic powers via an experimental technology developed by researchers Chuck Brenton and Matt Streegman, take the world hostage, claiming to want to make the planet a safer place for everyone. Sounds good—but maybe not at the cost of countless lives. Chuck and Matt may be the only ones who can stop them—but doing so will mean turning themselves into their own guinea pigs. The first book read like a Michael Crichton thriller rebooted for the modern age, and we can’t wait for more.

September

The Ruin of Angels: A Novel of the Craft Sequence, by Max Gladstone (September 5)
Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence ranks with the best of modern fantasy (hence the 2017 Hugo nomination for Best Series), even if the books themselves defy genre conventions. In the Craft world, magic works much like economics, with magic-wielding main characters that are also lawyers and stockbrokers. The series is moving to Tor.com Publishing for book six, in which Kai Pohala returns to Agdel Lex to close a business deal and reconnect with her estranged sister, who she soon discovers is on the run from the Authority. Gladstone’s books typically don’t need to be read in any particular order, so this might be the rare case of a sixth book that’s also appropriate for noobs.

The Brightest Fell, by Seanan McGuire (September 5)
Another one from the wonderful Seanan McGuire, the latest in her long-running October Daye series—and the first to be published in hardcover. The books are about half-fairy Toby Daye, a badass but reluctant hero who has never entirely fit in the fae lands or in the human world that she’s come to call home. In the eleventh volume, Toby’s mother shows up on her doorstep with a series of demands Toby’s not particularly inclined to entertain—until mom starts taking hostages, and leads Toby on a quest to find an older sister who disappeared well over a century earlier.

The Bronze Skies (Skolian Empire #22), by Catherine Asaro (September 5)
One of the longest-running series to see a sequel this year, Asaro’s Skolian Empire (aka Tales of the Ruby Dynasty) started way back in the last century (1995, to be exact). The generational series has frequently followed Major Bhaajan, a once poor member of the underclass who rose to prominence as an officer of the Star Command, and then retired. In the latest, she’s called upon to investigate an impossible murder: a member of the Assembly Council has been killed by one of the Jagernauts, elite warriors with spinal implants that control their actions.

Null States, by Malka Older (September 19)
Never has there been a more timely sci-fi debut than Infomocracy, Malka Older’s trenchant imagining of a near-future political system built upon the power of information—who holds it, who manipulates it, and who can use it to get what they want. The sequel opens in the wake of a global election that shifted the balance of power, threatening to disrupt the system that has maintained peace (of a sort) for a generation. A humanitarian worker and student of governance and disaster response, Older is also one of the most exciting new voices to emerge in the genre in recent years. To paraphrase a certain infamous SF politician, we’ll be watching her career with great interest.

Horizon, by Fran Wilde (September 26)
The first book in Wilde’s Bone Universe trilogy, 2015’s Updraft, was nominated for several major SFF awards, and won the Andre Norton Award, recognizing it as the year’s best young adult fantasy novel—but the series has a depth of character and invention that transcends any one age bracket. The evocative setting is a city grown from living bone, populated by people who traverse between them using artificial wings, living their their lives far from the dangers that lurk below the cloudline. As the series concludes, Kirit Densira is living in the aftermath of the revolution that took everything from her, including her home and her wings, and she’ll need to reunite her shattered family in order to survive.

October

The Core (The Demon Cycle #5), by Peter V. Brett (October 3)
The demons are coming, yo. The corelings are beings that hunt humans at night, culling the population to keep us manageable. Our only defense is the warriors who use powerful wards and holy symbols to keep them at bay. Former friends and allies Arlen Bales and Jardir have been divided by betrayal, but are reunited in this final book of the series to defeat the Swarm and find out who will fulfill the prophecy of the Deliverer—the one who will lead humanity to triumph against the demons.

The Seven (The Vagrant  #3), by Peter Newman (October 3)
The concluding volume of Newman’s impressive post-apocalyptic epic fantasy trilogy completes the story of Vesper, once a child carried to safety across a blighted landscape by the mysterious, mute Vagrant, now grown, the carrier of the sentient sword Malice, and the woman who closed the breach between worlds. It seems she has cleared the way for the next great age of peace, but then The Seven awaken—and everything changes again. That plot description does nothing to prepare you for the originality of the characters and world of this series, which manages to be grim and hopeful in equal measure, with flourishes no other writer would think of (certainly no other series has made us love reading about goats quite so much).

The Stone in the Skull, by Elizabeth Bear (October 10)
One of the award-winningest writers in SFF today, Bear returns to the world of her Eternal Sky trilogy with a brand-new series (making this either a sequel or a first book, depending upon how you define your terms). Two friends are walking into a war between the competing dynasties of the once great empire. The Gage is a mercenary automaton given life and purpose by a wizard long dead; The Dead Man is a dispossessed former bodyguard to the deposed Caliph. The two are to be our guides into the battle over the southern Lotus Kingdoms.

Vallista, by Steven Brust (October 17)
Brust’s long-running, genre-bending, fantasy/sci-fi series takes place on a planet called Dragaera, on which the genetically engineered and elf-like Dragaerans rule an Empire and maintain humans as an underclass. Vlad Taltos is a criminal and witch whose father bought a membership in one of the Dragaeran houses, making him the only human to be an actual citizen. In the latest book, Vlad is on the run, his own house having put a price on his head. A mysterious Dragaeran girl leads him to a secluded manor with rooms that look into other worlds, which may provide Vlad some long-awaited answers.

The Mongrel Mage, by L. E. Modesitt Jr. (October 31)
Modesitt’s long-running Saga of Recluce series marks 19 books with this latest, and begins a brand-new story arc. Traditionally, the mages of Recluce have wielded either white chaos magic or black order magic. Beltur, the title’s mongrel mage, is something new, or, at least, not seen in a very long time: a wizard whose burgeoning powers seem to have him on a course to blend both supernatural schools, bringing balance to order and chaos.

Malice of Crows, by Lila Bowen (October 31)
Lila Bowen’s dark western fantasy series following the coming-of-age of Rhett Hennessy (neé Nettie Lonesome) has knocked our socks off (and made our best of the year list) two books running, and we’re willing to follow the author wherever she takes us next. Based on what the plot description tells us, however—Rhett faces a final showdown with the evil alchemist whose dark magical empire he dismantled, understandably pissing him off in the process—the road isn’t going to get any easier. Especially if the damaged loner is forced to do the one thing he never asked for—become a leader.

November

Communication Failure (Epic Failure #2), by Joe Zieja (November 7)
Look, we’re more than willing to admit that humor is subjective, but if loving Zieja’s goofball military sci-fi spoof is wrong, we don’t want to be right. Inept bureaucracies, malicious-if-slightly-incompetent robots, and a hero who’d rather be anything but—what’s not to like? When we last left reluctant, newly promoted Captain Rogers, he’d put down a mechanical uprising shortly before wandering into an alien fleet demanding his surrender, which would swiftly put an end to the Two Hundred Years (And Counting) peace the galaxy has enjoyed for the last…200 years. It’s up to Rogers to avert disaster for the human race—which is definitely not a good thing for the human race. Zieja may have a penchant for dad jokes, but damnit, they’re good dad jokes, and his satire of the frustrations of military life (gleaned from the author’s own decade of service) is razor sharp.

Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archives #3), by Brandon Sanderson (November 14)
Modern fantasy master Sanderson is latest follows in the wake of Words of Radiance. Dalinar Kholin’s Alethi armies won the battle against the Parshendi, but at great cost: the Everstorm is sweeping the world, and the enslaved parshmen are on the verge of revolt. The Voidbringers enter into this fray, in incredible numbers and bent on vengeance. With the promise that this is the longest book in the series to date (if not the longest book Sanderson has ever written), you can be assured of one thing: epic fantasy doesn’t get more epic than this.

December

Persepolis Rising, by James S. A. Corey (December 5)
Not much is known about the latest in James S.A. Corey’s space opera series, save that it begins a three-book arc that will end the entire saga (even as it lives on as a television series, or so we can hope). The previous book saw the belters of the Free Navy cripple Earth amid of reign of piracy, so the stakes have certainly never been higher. This thoughtful, but still action-packed series largely follows James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante as they navigate a future in which humanity taken its petty politics and territorial squabbles into the stars. Expect awe and wonder, even as you want to smack some of the characters upside the head.

Moved to 2018
After this post was published, a reader pointed out that the release date for one of the titles was recently pushed to 2018. However, we’re still excited for it, so we present our original blurb below, with the caveat that you’ll have to wat a few weeks after New Year’s to read it.

Iron Gold (Red Rising #4), by Pierce Brown (January 2018)
The Red in the Red Rising series is quite literal: it refers to both Mars, and the color-coded system of social hierarchy that exists in mankind’s future. The Golds run the show and the series’ main protagonist Darrow is a Red, one of the lowest class of workers deep in the mines of Mars. Over the course of the series, he lead a messy rebellion against the ruling class that seemed to go fairly well. At least until the latest, set several years later in a solar system on the thin line between a brave new order or a dark age.

What’s on your pre-order list?