Award-Winning Fantasy Novels of 2024

Let’s start with a book that scooped two awards this year, winning both the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the Ignyte Award for Outstanding Novel: The Saint of Bright Doors, by Vajra Chandrasekera.

Yes! And it was also nominated for the Hugo. I think it’s a fantastic debut; I can’t wait to see more from Chandrasekera.

We follow Fetter, the child of a god with an unwanted destiny. He is touched by magical power in ways more unsettling than useful – he is missing his shadow, he is able to see the creepy demons that shuffle among humans, and he’s in danger of floating if he doesn’t concentrate on staying grounded. He lives in the immediately-believable city of Luriat, where ‘bright doors’ are a nuisance: any door left shut for too long may refuse to open again, and become one of the city’s sacred doors. Some keen enthusiasts try to study them, while most people ignore them – one of the many ways in which this invented society feels utterly human and real.

The book slowly crosses from the familiar-feeling to the numinous, as the powers controlling Fetter’s life mount. His godlike father returns, and his destiny begins to take hold. From here things cross into a mythic, spell-like mode.

A fabulous debut – highly recommended.

Next up is another nominee for multiple awards, but it ultimately won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel – tell us about Witch King by Martha Wells.

Yes, this was also a nominee for both the Hugo and the Nebula awards. Wells has declined nominations for her sci fi series Murderbot twice now, because it has received so many already. It’s exciting to see her here with a very different sort of novel.

The world of Witch King is one of demons and witches, and visceral spell-like magic that draws on pain for its power. There’s a chilling, water-logged atmosphere to the whole story, and the explanation of the magic is understated so that the world feels awe-inspiring, rather than pseudo-scientific.

The story itself is pacey, following a political resistance across two timelines – before and after their victory. There is no easy sense of final battles or triumphant-good – this is a world where political victories are hard-won and partial.

Let’s talk about the Mythopoeic Award Winner – first, what are these awards looking for?

This is about work that is in ‘the spirit of the Inklings’ – the group composed of C S Lewis, J R R Tolkien and Charles Williams. The society describe mythopoeic work as ‘literature that creates a new and transformative mythology, or incorporates and transforms existing mythological material’. It’s a really interesting award to keep an eye on; the popularity of this kind of fantasy waxes and wanes, so it’s great to see it consistently championed.

And this year the winner was Ink Blood Sister Scribe, by Emma Törzs.

Yes. This book is so much fun! In this world, books written in blood under the right conditions become spells, activated when read aloud. Two daughters are born into a family that keeps and protects some of these books behind magical wards. The wards hide the house – but one of the daughters is resistant to magic, so she has to leave, to avoid giving her family’s presence away. The other stays alone in their old house, never knowing why her sister left.

The sisters, Esther and Joanna, don’t know exactly who their house is in danger from. We follow each of them, plus a third character Nick, who is living in a powerful spell library that neither of the sisters know about – and who is also navigating uncertain dangers. The three timelines keep us constantly guessing, piecing together what the dangers might be from the scattered information of each protagonist. And it’s worth the wait: it all comes to a satisfying conclusion.

It’s a really appealing world to spend time inside. There’s the sister’s old and atmospheric house, Nick’s palatial and empty library, Esther’s current life on an Arctic research station… One to curl up with on a rainy day.

Sounds magical. I think the next book on the list is a little more unsettling…?

Oh, definitely!

Tell us about The Reformatory by Tananarive Due, which won the World Fantasy Award for best novel.

It’s fascinating to see this one scoop the World Fantasy Award; it’s being shelved most often as horror. It’s also an excellent piece of historical fiction. So it slightly defies categorisation, in the best way.

It’s a gripping read. It’s 1950s Florida, and our protagonists – siblings – are black, their father on the run after trying to unionise and being falsely accused of rape, their mother dead. Young Robert is sent to the Reformatory, an institute for juvenile ‘offenders’ (he kicked a grown man to defend his sister). Here there are haints, i.e. ghosts; premonitions are the other major fantasy element. The supernatural here is definitely on the disturbing side.

But the haints aren’t the worst horror of the book. The Reformatory is a heart-breakingly cruel place, in perfectly earthly ways – it’s based on Florida’s infamous Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. At times the haints feel like they offer some release from the too-real world you are reading about, somewhere for your imagination to escape. It’s a huge achievement, a really compelling book, convincingly fantastical while also presenting a real slice of history.

Finally, let’s look at a winner in the novella category: the Hugo Award and the Locus Award for Best Novella went to Thornhedge, by Ursula Vernon.

I loved this book! It’s a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, from the fairy godmother’s point of view. But that doesn’t do it justice at all. This isn’t a straight-up point-of-view switch, or a pointed review of the original morality. It’s a whole new fairy tale in its own right.

Toadling has grown up in fairyland, with a particular group of fairies, a water-dwelling variety. There’s a wonderful sense of a whole world and its denizens just out of sight here. The baby princess is a danger that needs containing, and Toadling is sent to do the job with a well-worded wish, but makes a slip. She is left with the burden of guarding the sleeping princess and keeping the tower impassable, to prevent her waking, and make the best of her botched job. The story tells this story of her past, while also telling the present as she journeys with the man who has come to wake the princess.