Here we are, nearing the end of 2025 and it has been another banner year of reading! By the time this goes live, I’ll have read 61 books, 60 of them have been indie or self-published books. I love the breadth of genre and imagination of indie books, there are so many gems out there that I wish I had more time to devour them all. But alas, the TBR remains ever endless…
Doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun, eh???
Obviously I’m not going to make this post and touch on all 61 books, so like last year, I want to highlight a handful of my faves in fun, quirky ways. So without further ado:
Best Carved Animal:
Review:
A tropey farmboy who likes to carve is the prophesied one who will break the clan who made his father an outcast. In an epic case of parents brutally slain, said farmboy trope goes off with a Xena cosplayer and together they begin to wreak havoc on the politics of the clan. They also form one hell of an entangled love triangle.
There’s political machinations aplenty, head scalping aplenty, arrows buzzing aplenty, mead drunken aplenty, and post first battle coitus and other secksy time aplenty.
Plus the best carved kestrel this side of the Danube River.
Best Cauldron of Molten Metal Death since Viserys Targaryern:
Review:
Movie voice guy: In a world where magick is punishable by violent death, one girl takes in a bunch of orphans and tries to keep them hidden. But when she breaks her own rule and uses magic, she’s forced to resort to sex, heist, and random deus ex magicka dudes showing up to survive. Will she become the Light of Kasaban or will her light be shadowed forever?
Spoiler alert, there be blood and death inside these tense pages. This FMC goes through the wringer and then some!
Bestest Demon-slaying Tiger Companion:
Review:
Twins of a dead bloodline use their special gifts to destroy every demon they come across. If only their magic could slay their inner demons as well…
The broody brother is gruff, brutal, and looking for love in a brothel. The pragmatic sister is annoyed, hopeful, and looking for love with a king. Throw in a green squire and a fearsome tiger, and you got yourself a troupe of demon slayers.
Heaps of dead bodies, human and demon alike, this book grabs you by the throat, slams you into the wall, and fillets your guts all while making you want to throw your book against the wall and swear at the author.
Best Use of a Magic Blunderbuss:
Review:
Energy can be drawn from objects—including people—and transferred into magic. These are catalysts and channelers, plus a dampener who can hide a catalyst’s power. Two opposing lands are at war, fighting over the world’s most epic catalyst. The source of their strife (oh yeah, title pun!) is the fact that the two leaders of said lands are estranged hubby/wifey and the catalyst is their daughter. To get back his daughter, hubs is opening rifts where zombie-like creatures are attacking, so loyal soldiers from wifey’s side decide to kidnap catalyst and bring her to daddy to stop these rifts.
Ghost is a former soldier of mama’s but has long since gone his own way. He is drawn back into this tug-of-war for plot reasons, but he was hella cool. Dude has some serious baggage and it all unfolds over the course of the story. Ghost is a channeler, but he’s also been able to create some energycasters (aka six-shooters ala Weird West) and the bullets are catalysts. His tools are just awesome.
Best Use of Tackling the Villain Out a Window:
Review:
A trilogy capper is always a hard thing to land (ooooooh yeah, another pun!) but this book sticks the landing (heh heh).
With our resident pseudo-daddy Lin trying to end the war over his adoptive daughter, things are getting spicy as a leader amongst the untethered rises. With his beloved Denny by his side (#freedenny), Lin goes into enemy territory and finds a person he’s pinned over for 2 books. Lots of dialogue happens and Lin realizes he has to fight until the end.
With battles galore, wefts weaved and thrown, untethered scaling walls, and a vicious battle to the death, this series ends with a solid bang. Criminally underrated, go read it now!
Best Ripoff of Classic Fantasy Tropes:
Review:
The Servant is not just a love letter to classic high fantasy, this is a John Cusack holding a boombox up to the Mount Rushmore of classic high fantasy: Tolkien, Brooks, Jordan, and Weis/Hickman.
Woodland girl, Ashera, is tied to an ancient prophecy and like all good classic fantasy stories, and she is tasked with defeating a resurfaced dark lord. What unfolds in these ~800 pages is a journey we’ve seen plenty of times but can never ever get enough of. Add in some excellent side characters and we have ourselves a boiling pot of porridge.
I mean it when I say this is classic fantasy to a ‘T’. We have a champion and a dark lord after the World’s Heart. We have the Light v Dark, aka good v evil. We have swords of Light and Dark (oh my). We have a ‘farmboy/girl save the world’ trope. We have demon beasties who are just here to kill Team Good Guys/Gals. We have dark wizards who work for the dark lord. Good wizards who help our champion. A literal slow build journey from humble beginnings to prophecized leader. Literal Prophecies (this is obvious since the series title is Prophecy of the Five). Woodland elves. Dwarves. Faeries. This tome is bursting with classic fantasy concepts and each one of them is reverent to the very idea of said tropes, almost to a fault (of which I absolutely adore).
Best ‘Oh Shit, this Story just got Dark!’ Moment:
Review:
A tense prisoner of war tale (and tail) that doesn’t shy away from the brutality of war, the concept of doing bad things for the good of your people, or the stubbornness of hope.
This book has half-scorpion people and other humanoids, so without spoiling said ‘oh shit’ moment, just keep that bit of knowledge in the back of your head.
That said, this book is pretty brutal in terms of plot. With the way the book starts, I was expecting a war story, but that is shattered within a few chapters, and instead we get a completely different story, one I didn’t realize I wanted. And then the ‘oh shit’ moment hits and it gets even better!
Best Zombie Musical Instrument:
Review:
Ever like music so much you wanted to imbue a drum with the ability to raise the dead??? Yeah, Baptiste obviously did because he wrote a book about one!
One part Seven Samurai, one part 13th Warrior, one part Dawn of the Dead, one part Breakfast Club, this book follows nine badasses as they try to find the source of the drum’s power while trying to not get dead by the troves of undead. There’s intrigue, betrayals, blood, gore, lies, and deceit all lumped together in this fast-paced read.
Spoiler alert, not everyone makes it out alive!
Best Dirty Rug:
Review:
What do you get when you have a reverse D&D murderhobo dungeon crawler disguised as a treatise on grief and loneliness? Majordomo!
The basic plot is thus: Jack is a club-footed kobold who runs a famous necromancer’s bunker/tower/home, and said necromancer is famed to horde lots of treasure, so would-be heroes constantly invade, leaving Jack to hire lots of unsavory stereotypical villain races to defend the bunker/tower/home in a very Home Alone style from these murderhobos. Got it? Good.
But stuffed between all the comedic moments is a father-figure losing his mental faculties that will tug at your heartstrings and make you weep like a baby because of Daddy issues. A worthy winner of the Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championship.
Best Metal Dragon Realm Jumping Ship:
Review:
What do a drunkard, a spirit-walking elf outcast, and a scorned woman all have in common? They’re not only Rangers but are forced into a fight to the death with some mummified soldiers in polished armor searching for some ancient dragons to feed some realm-ruining eldritch overlords.
Separately, what do a queen’s counselor, a bunch of secretive god worshiping religious leaders, and a handful of alchemists have in common? They scheme and connive breaking 1000 years of religious scripture to stop said ancient dragons from feeding their realm to realm-ruining eldritch overlords.
There be dragons!
Best Trad Published Book of 2025:
Review:
To be fair, I only read one trad book this year because I just prefer indie books. But Kristoff’s an auto-read for me as I resonate keenly with all his books (been reading them since Stormdancer came out!)
But Empire of the Dawn (I read the ARC, thanks Andy!) is hands down one of the best books ever, this series is Mount Rushmore for fantasy series. I could not have asked for a better book, nor do I know where Jay is going to go next (actually I do because I was able to interview him and he told me what the next book is and squeeeeee I cannot wait!).
This series is everything and more, go read it!
And there we are, my top reads of 2025! Again, I read so many good books/novellas this year, the vast majority a solid 5 stars. My TBR list is insanely long, so it looks like 2026 is already going to be a really good reading year!
Hope your 2025 was as great as mine!
Leave a Reply