It’s August, I know, but we’re already going to have a look at what awesome books September will have to offer! So, here you will find the 15 best fantasy & sci-fi book releases of September 2020.
I’ll say, it seems to be a good month for lovers of Young Adult! Many, many new Young Adult books are coming out. By the by, if you’re not ready yet for thinking about September, you can also check out the book releases of August here.
A short preview of the Book Releases September 2020
- Blood & Honey: The Serpent & Dove sequel is here! Need I say more?
- Cemetery Boys: If you’re looking for more diversity in your reading, look no further and plunge right into this book!
- The Lost Book of the White: A book centered around Alec Lightwood & Magnus Bane? Yes, please!
- Fable: A story about a woman fighting for her place in a man’s world. At sea.
- Legendborn: I do love books that feature secret magical societies at school. I mean, what’s not to love?
- The Left-Handed Booksellers of London: Many mysteries, including murder, and alternative English history with accidental overlap between the Old and Modern world.
- Battle Ground: A new Dresden Files! The stakes in this one seem higher and more impossible than ever.
- Famine: To quench your thirst for steamy, forbidden, enemies-to-lovers romance.
Book Releases September 2020
Blood & Honey (Serpent & Dove #2) – Shelby Mahurin
Genre: YA Fantasy Romance
Pubdate: 1st of September
Publisher: HarperTeen
It’s the sequel to Serpent & Dove! I’ll admit, I haven’t read Serpent & Dove (yet. It’s somewhere on my tbr list), but I’ve heard good things. The sequel promises to have even more romance and darker magic.
In Blood & Honey, Lou, Reid, Coco, and Ansel are now on the run from coven, kingdom, and church. Lou and Reid know they need allies, and strong ones at that. But nothing comes for free, so the group needs to embark on separate quests. Lou and Reid try to close the widening rift between them, while Morgane keeps on baiting them and threatens to destroy something more than just a coven.
Cemetery Boys – Aiden Thomas
Genre: YA Fantasy, LGBT
Pubdate: 1st of September
Publisher: Swoon Reads
How annoying is it when you summon a ghost, and now he doesn’t go away? Yadriel knows it’s quite a pain. While his traditional family has problems accepting his gender, Yadriel is determined to prove himself. He performs a ritual and sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin to set it free. Unfortunately, he summons the wrong ghost, called Julian Diaz, who’s a bit of a bad boy, and he doesn’t want to go quietly into death. He wants to find out what happened to him and tie up some loose ends. Yadriel agrees to help him, since he doesn’t really have another choice, but finds he’s becoming more and more reluctant to let Julian go.
The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) – Cassandra Clare & Wesley Chu
Genre: YA Fantasy Romance, LGBT, Urban Fantasy
Pubdate: 1st of September
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
While I haven’t read any of the shadowhunter books (again, it’s on my tbr, I swear), I have watched the Netflix show. And, Magnus and Alec were, without a doubt, my favorite couple on the show. So the fact that there’s a book series with the pair is freaking exciting! I might start my initiation in the shadowhunter book universe with this very series.
Anyway, Magnus and Alec are living their best life, together with their son Max, until two old acquaintances break into Magnus’ apartment to steal the powerful Book of the White. So they need to get it back. It takes them to Shanghai, together with Clary, Jace, Isabelle, and Simon. Unfortunately, Magnus gets stabbed with a magical weapon, causing his magic to grow increasingly unstable, and the demons keep flooding into the city. They might just have to get to the source: the realm of the dead. Can they stop the threat?
Fable – Adrienne Young
Genre: YA Fantasy Adventure
Pubdate: 1st of September
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Fable does not have an easy life. After her mother drowned at sea, her father, the most powerful trader in the Narrows, abandoned Fable on an island. Not just any island: a legendary island filled with thieves and little food. Her only desire is to get off the island to find her father and demand her rightful place beside him. For this, she gets help from a young trader named West. Together, they have to survive the dangers and storms that haunt the Narrows.
Famine (The Four Horsemen #3) – Laura Thalassa
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Pubdate: 1st September
Publisher: Lavabrook Publishing
Ana da Silva was not expecting to die at the hands of Famine, the immortal who once spared her life many years ago. If the horseman remembered her, he doesn’t seem to care, as he stabbed her and left her for dead. Only she doesn’t quite die. So she promises Famine pain, an empty threat to an immortal Horsemen. Still, it captivates him, and he decides to keep her around. While they’re drawn to each other, they remain enemies, a fact that a few steamy nights can’t change.
The other side of the sky – Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner
Genre: YA Sci-fi Romance
Pubdate: 8th of September
Publisher: HarperTeen
Prince North lives in the sky, in a gleaming city held aloft by engines, powered by technology. Nimh is the living goddess of the people on the Surface, responsible for answers, direction, and hope. Their lives are connected, linked by a prophecy. North and Nimh are caught between duty and fate, as they must choose between saving their people or succumbing to their forbidden bond.
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars – Christopher Paolini
Genre: Adult Sci-fi, Space Opera
Pubdate: 15th of September
Publisher: Tor Books
Kira Navárez is out on a routine research mission but finds an alien relic beneath the surface of an uncolonized planet. It transforms her forever and alters the course of human history. Kira wants to discover the truth about the civilization, which leads to both the wonders and nightmares of first contact, complete with space battles for the fate of humankind.
Piranesi – Susanna Clarke
Genre: Adult Fantasy
Pubdate: 15th of September
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Piranesi has a bit of a strange house. It has infinite rooms, endless corridors, walls lined with thousands of statues, somewhere an ocean is imprisoned, creating waves thundering up staircases and flooded rooms. But Piranesi knows the tides and the pattern of the labyrinth. There’s one more person living there, called ‘The Other,’ who visits Piranesi twice a week to ask for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores more and more of the house, he finds evidence of another person, and terrible truths begin to unravel.
Legendborn (Legendborn #1) – Tracy Deonn
Genre: YA Fantasy
Pubdate: 15th of September
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
After her mother dies in an accident, Bree wants nothing to do with her childhood home. Thankfully, she gets accepted into a residential program for bright high-schoolers. But then Bree witnesses a flying demon feeding on human energies on her very first night there. A teenage mage who goes by the name ‘Merlin,’ who is part of a secret society called ‘Legendborn,’ tries to wipe Bree’s memory but fails. This unlocks Bree’s magic and a buried memory, unveiling an essential piece of information about her mother’s death. Bree’s set on finding out the truth, even if she has to infiltrate the Legendborn.
The Ippos King (Wraith Kings #3) – Grace Draven
Genre: Fantasy Romance
Pubdate: 15th of September
Publisher: –
Serovek Pangion sets out to the heretical Jeden Order to deliver the soulless body of the monk Megiddo for safekeeping. He’s not alone: sha-Anhuset is with him. A woman he admires and desires, while the woman herself barely tolerates him. Though she fears Serovek might just worm his way into her heart. However, this seems a very small problem when the demons thought vanquished stir again. A warlord with blood-soaked ambitions turns the journey into a struggle for survival.
The Silvered Serpents (The Gilded Wolves #2) – Rokshani Chokshi
Genre: YA Historical Fantasy Romance, LGBT
Pubdate: 22nd September
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Séverin and his team thwarted the Fallen House, but at great cost. Desperate to make it right, Séverin sets his mind on finding the lost artifact rumored to grant its possessor the power of God. This lures him and his team in the icy heart of Russia, filled with ice animals, broken goddesses, and a lot of unsolved murders. Secrets find the light as the past catches up, leading them down paths they never imagined.
The Left-Handed Booksellers of London – Garth Nix
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Pubdate: 22nd of September
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Susan Arkshaw turns to crime boss Frank Thringley to help her find her father, a man she never met. But before Frank can help her, he dies by the prick of a silver hatpin in the hands of Merlin. Merlin is a young bookseller of the fighting kind, who, together with the booksellers of the intellectual kind, is an extended family of magical beings who police the mythic Old World when it intrudes on the modern world. And so Susan searches on, only going by a list of possible surnames, a reading room ticket, and a silver cigarette case. Somehow, her quest overlaps with the quest of Merlin and his sister: to find the Old World entity responsible for their mother’s murder. Who or what was Susan’s father?
A Deadly Education (Scholomance #1) – Naomi Novik
Genre: YA Fantasy
Pubdate: 29th of September
Publisher: Del Rey Books
Scholomance is a school for the magically gifted. But, if you fail, you die. Naturally, survival becomes more important than any grade. A girl named El is somehow uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers, even without allies. She possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains, so she should be able to defeat the monsters that live in the school. The downside: her magic might also kill her fellow students.
Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) – Jim Butcher
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pubdate: 29th of September
Publisher: Ace
Yep, a new Dresden Files is coming! This time, Harry faces a mighty being, The Last Titan, and she’s bringing an army with her. She declared war on the city of Chicago, ready to subjugate humanity. Naturally, Harry can’t let that happen, so the wizard needs to stop the Titan, which seems pretty much impossible. Will he succeed?
Skyhunter (Skyhunter #1) – Marie Lu
Genre: YA Dystopian Sci-fi
Pubdate: 29th of September
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Mara is one of the last free nations in the world, with refugees fleeing to its border, all trying to escape a fate worse than death. A transformation into mutant war beasts, creatures made by the Karensa Federation. Mara’s elite fighting force, the Strikers, is trained to stop them, but the number of creatures grows, and Karensa closes in. But one Striker, Talin Kanami, is not about to give up, especially when a mysterious prisoner is brought from the front. A spy? Or a weapon that can save them all?
What are you going to read in September?
And that wraps up the list of the fantasy and sci-fi book releases for September 2020. Which of the book releases are you most looking forward to? I think I should probably read Serpent & Dove so that I can get right into Blood & Honey. And perhaps I’ll start my Shadowhunter journey with this lovely series centered around Alec and Magnus, because, well, I love those two. But I gotta say there’s a lot of books that sound very interesting to read. Ah, so many books, so little time…
