Who will walk away with this amazing and evocative piece of sculpture? Read about the history of the World Fantasy Award trophy HERE.
By now, I have read all the novels short-listed for the 2025 World Fantasy Awards, and I have reviewed them too, in this space. If you missed them, see the list of nominated novels below to be directed to the reviews. The awards will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention, to be held soon in Brighton UK on Oct. 30-Nov. 2, 2025.
As we await the judges’ decision, here are the short-listed novels:
The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape)–This novel won the 2025 Hugo Award and was short-listed for the Locus Award. Find my review HERE.
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. Find my review HERE.
The Bog Wife, Kay Chronister (Counterpoint; Titan UK)–what IS this thing? Southern/Appalachian Gothic? Magical Realism? Fascinating read. Find my review HERE.
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. Find my review HERE.
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? Winner of the 2025 Compton Crook Award. Find my review HERE.
So if I were one of the judges, where would I cast my vote? I’m not, of course. But anyone anticipating an award like this usually roots for a favorite. I have two favorites, actually–both of the novels with the word “wife” in the title. And they couldn’t be more different. The Fox Wife and The Bog Wife–superb novels in completely different ways, each with its own take on what “fantasy” means. I would cheer if either of these two novels wins the award.
There’s not a clunker in the bunch, though, so I don’t envy the judges after all. I truly enjoyed reading each one of the five novels on this list. I will cheer whatever the judges decide. Great list! I only wish I had the time to read the nominated works in all the other categories. But I stick mostly to novels in this blog.
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.
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?
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. I’m heading toward the end of my quest to read and review all the novels short-listed for the award. The decision of the judges is coming up soon!
The list and my next review:
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 my preceding 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 this 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?
Grossman’s novel is huge, a real door-stopper in the grand fantasy tradition. The subtitle tells us it’s “A Novel of King Arthur,” but I wouldn’t call him a major character. And that’s fine. In a way, Arthur is everywhere in this novel, the controlling force beyond it all. That’s the classic Arthurian shtick, after all.
Grossman’s book explores the haunting premise, “What if you’re a bold young man looking to make your bones as a hero at Camelot, but when you get there, the show’s already over?” The young and impoverished wanna-be hero setting out to prove himself is the stuff of countless folk tales and chivalric romances, both in the Arthurian tradition and out of it. The Hero’s Journey in the flesh. But then–noooo!–the worst nightmares of your knightly FOMO are realized.
A book like this should be catnip for a reader the likes of me. I pondered why that didn’t turn out to be the case. It may be because the tone is uneven. That could work. It really could–but it somehow didn’t for me. The problem (if it is one–and it may not be for you, at all) shows up right away. The epigraph that begins part one is from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Fun! I love Monty Python! I love that movie! I can quote you verbatim from that movie! And then the chapter divisions are extremely reminiscent of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, the 15th century text that governs how just about everyone in the English-speaking world sees the Arthurian legend. The Matter of Britain itself. I like the quick and useful summary about that in Wikipedia, by the way–take it further if you’re interested.
You don’t have to have actually read Malory. Almost every depiction of King Arthur and his court since Malory, including Monty Python, is indebted to that take on the Arthurian, especially ones that include Lancelot (an import from the French romances), even those that deliberately set out to counter Malory’s version.
The epigraph at the very beginning of Grossman’s novel comes from a much earlier hint about the Arthur story from The Black Book of Carmarthen. This is a mid-13th century Welsh compilation of manuscripts drawn from even earlier material, including some of the earliest accounts of Myrddin (Merlin) especially dear to my own heart, since I have written about that version of Merlin in my own fiction and also used the “Pa gur” verses as an inspiration. One part of The Black Book of Carmarthen can be translated as “The Verses of the Graves,” poetry describing the resting places of legendary great heroes, one of them being one of the earliest mentions of King Arthur we know of. But the structure of Grossman’s novel is all Malory.
That said, however. . .you should understand this is just my own take on the novel. Grossman himself appended a really interesting historical note at the end, some of it congruent with my thinking, some of it different, and he’s the author, after all.
For me, though, Grossman’s novel lives in the gap between the Pythonesque and the Malorian, and then also mixes in very contemporary concerns and insights. His version of the tale gives us completely matter-of-fact realistic characters inhabiting the iconic Arthurian fantasy landscape, with humor thrown in. The way the tale unfolds is particularly indebted to Malory. As in Malory (and other Arthurian material before him), a frame story encloses episodic tales of the various knights of Camelot and their adventures. The frame story for Grossman’s novel is the story of the main character, young bumbling Collum from the provinces, heading for Camelot and hoped-for glory. He finds more than he bargains for, including the mystery of his own identity.
His tale is continually interrupted by tales of the other Camelot knights–“The Tale of Sir Bedivere,” “The Tale of Sir Palomides,” etc. If you’re a Monty Python fan, you might recognize these mock-heroic titles of episodes from there, but they hark back to Malory (“The Noble Tale of Syr Launcelot du Lake,” “The Fyrste Boke of Syr Trystram de Lyones,” and so on.) Grossman’s version of these knights’ tales are interesting in themselves, not least because he puts a very contemporary spin on the identities of some of the knights. I liked them, and I liked the over-arching tale of Collum’s coming of age. I loved the poignant ending. But somehow, at least for me, the parts were more interesting than the whole.
And the whole is long. Long and rambling. The characters keep thinking profound thoughts seemingly drawing the narrative to a close, but nope–there’s more. And more. And more.
This may be exactly what you need, so don’t go by me.
Full disclosure: My doctoral dissertation was on Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, ANOTHER endlessly long tome (blessedly cut short by the death of the poet, and I’m glad that’s not the case here) supposedly about King Arthur but in which Arthur himself makes only a few appearances–Arthur before he is king, in Spenser’s case, not after. So maybe that is skewing my response to this book. Poor authors can never predict what crazy readers they may end up with. They just send their books out into the world and wave bye-bye.
Fantastes 
You must be logged in to post a comment.