The decision of the judges for the 2025 World Fantasy Awards will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention, held this year in Brighton UK on Oct. 30-Nov. 2, 2025. Coming up fast!

Here’s the list once again, and my final review of the books short-listed for the award in the novels category:

The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape)–This novel won the 2025 Hugo Award and was short-listed for the Locus Award. Mentioned in a previous post, reviewed in my posts about the 2025 Hugo nominees.

The Fox Wife, Yangsze Choo (Holt; Quercus UK)–a wonderful overlay of Chinese folklore on the early 20th century historical conflict between China and Japan. Reviewed in a previous post.

The Bog Wife, Kay Chronister (Counterpoint; Titan UK)–what IS this thing? Southern/Appalachian Gothic? Magical Realism? Fascinating read. Reviewed in a previous post.

The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman (Viking; Del Rey UK)–combined Monty Pythonesque and Malory Morte-D’Arthur-esque massive novel about the Arthurian world in decline. Reviewed in my preceding post.

The Wings Upon Her Back, Samantha Mills (Tachyon)–What if profound disillusionment causes you to lose your wings? What would you do to get them back?–reviewed in this post.

The Wings Upon Her Back, Samantha Mills

This interesting fantasy novel won the 2025 Compton Crook Award. With its tinkering engineers and machines, it has a bit of a gaslamp vibe. Zenya, the heroine of the novel, is a member of a highly stratified society. Some are scholars, some engineers, some live a life of service–and some are the warriors and protectors who keep the community safe, especially from its bitter rival. As she comes of age in this war-torn world, teen-aged Zenya has to make a choice. Stay in the family tradition and be a scholar, or follow her dream of becoming one of her society’s elite warriors. The best of the warriors have been engineered and trained to carry mechanical wings on their backs. Zenya is dazzled, and when she does join the warrior elite, she is further dazzled by the attentions of a powerful mentor who promises she will earn her wings and take her place among the elite of the elite.

As you can see, Mills’s book shares characteristics with novels like Veronica Roth’s Divergence, in the stratification of society; with Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing, in the glamor of fascinating fantasy ways to fly around; with those and many other popular fantasy reads that feature tough militaristic training in a teen-ager academy setting. With its focus on Zenya’s inculcation into an essentially fascist cult and then on her disillusion with the cult, it reminds me most powerfully of Emily Tesh’s 2024 Hugo Award winner, Some Desperate Glory. Mills’s novel, like Tesh’s, is very timely–one big reason to read it.

What sets The Wings Upon Her Back apart from all those other novels is the way Mills tells her story. We readers flip back and forth from teen-aged gung-ho Zenya to adult disillusioned Zenya, and in this way, the novel distinguishes itself from all its YA cousins. Through Mills’s deft writing and ability to draw compelling characters, we readers see for ourselves the huge price Zenya has paid to get those wings of hers, the reasons she might be willing to risk them, and the mysterious secrets her society is desperate to keep from prying eyes.

I really did like this novel. One thing gave me pause, though. Here’s a society technologically advanced enough for airships, explosives, all manner of ingenious machinery–and very sophisticated surgical techniques–but the only thing they can think to do with their elite warriors (and with those sophisticated surgical techniques) is to implant difficult-to-use, very uncomfortable wings into their spines? (Ow.) That seems like a big stretch to me. I had a hard time, as Coleridge put it, “willingly suspending my disbelief.” It was as if the author said to herself, Well, here are books with cool dragons to ride, and there are books with this other cool hook, and these others with this other cool hook–what’s mine? I’m being far too cynical here, I know. Maybe completely unfair. The wings really are cool. But somehow, I didn’t quite believe in them.

NEXT: I tell you which of the short-listed novels are my favorites. And the judges don’t care! And you have your own ideas! So I could just keep my final opinions to myself. But where’s the fun in that?