Out of This World: 11 Awesome New SFF Books Out April 2025

This exciting Afrofuturist debut (sadly) doesn’t sound too far off from reality. Xandria Anastasia Brown is a librarian in Los Angeles in 2035 who, along with AI helper bots, curates the African American Ephemera collection and American Historical Manuscripts. But long COVID has taken a toll on Xandria, and the lapses in her memory are getting worse. It makes it hard to work and to deal with the hostile corporate takeover attempt threatening the library. When the library goes into emergency lockdown, stranding Xandria in the archive, she realizes everything she has collected and everything she believes is under attack.

From the author of The Mountain in the Sea, winner of the 2023 Locus Award for Best First Novel, comes this technothriller! It’s set in the near future, where the authoritarian President has held on to his position by downloading himself to new bodies and Europe is governed by AI Prime Ministers. But technology is breaking down all around the globe, threatening everyone, and the scientist who could break the President’s hold on the country has to go on the run, where she discovers a worldwide group of revolutionaries who might be the world’s last hope.

This is Nghi Vo’s fun companion novel to The Chosen and the Beautiful, a queer reimagining of The Great Gatsby from Jordan Baker’s point of view. This time, Nick Carraway is the Fitzgerald character leading the story. It’s twenty years after the events of The Great Gatsby, events that have haunted him. But now he may actually really be haunted by the past…

This dystopian fantasy combines time travel and psychic abilities! In the early twenty-second century, on a planet ruined by climate change, an event called the Bloom gives a small percentage of the population psychic capabilities. One of those people, Maida Sun, can tell an object’s history through touch. This leads her to the lives of people in 2006 and 1906, and it uncovers a government plot to get rid of everyone like her.

And this is a queer historical cozy fantasy about a Puerto Rican immigrant and a merman. In 1910s New York City, Benny is hired to build a new tank for a Coney Island amusement park. It’s the home of Rio, an actual merman stolen from the East River. As Benny spends time with Rio and getting to know his gentle soul and kind heart, he realizes he has met his soulmate. But his love with Rio will mean setting him free, which may cost Benny his job, his family, and the merman he loves.

Here is another exciting sci-fi novel that explores the dangers of AI (which has already become too real.) In Awakened, Wilder wakes up in Brooklyn one morning and discovers they understand every language in the world. This leads them to a small coven of trans witches, all with their own awakened abilities. When their world comes under threat from an evil artificial intelligence, they will have to use their powers to stop it.

Need to ruin your enemies and spoil all their fun? Hire a hellmaker, who can create customized hells on earth for them. Hyo is one such hellmaker, who has had to flee her village after a demon attack and has been cursed to avenge the deaths she encounters. But these deaths are suspicious, and as Hyo investigates, she uncovers a plot that involves the gods, and she might be the only one who can stop it. This high fantasy YA debut is also illustrated throughout by the author!

This is the first book in a new middle grade fantasy series from NYT bestselling author Graci Kim! Aria Loveridge is a Dreamslinger, which means she visits a faraway fantasy realm in her sleep. She lives at a home for Dreamslingers, where they can be watched over, since their powers can become dangerous, like when the League of Dreamslingers caused the deaths of hundreds, including Aria’s mom. So when the League announces a new competition, Aria joins in the hopes of learning what really happened that day and dismantling the League from the inside.

This YA romantasy reimagines the Korean legend of Celestial Maidens. A soldier who lives in perpetual darkness, waiting to find the one who brings light, crosses paths with an acrobat looking to find a cure for her dying uncle. Ren’s uncle was injured in a demon attack, in which Ren killed the monster using powers she didn’t know she had. As she brings her uncle across the mountains in search of help, she meets Sunho, the soldier, who offers to help. But neither know the other’s secret, and as their journey brings them closer together, the truth will have thunderous consequences.