21 more SF/F books to read in March 2025

A whole lotta books to add to your TBR.

Image: Andrew Liptak

It seems like spring is upon us here in Vermont: we had a huge storm pass through and in its aftermath, we're left with warmer temperatures and a lot of mud. Hopefully, things will begin to dry out soon. I'm looking forward to some reading time in the sun as the temperatures begin to climb.

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As always, you can find the prior monthly lists under the Book List tag, and you can read the first March list here:

Okay, here are 21 new books that you should check out for the rest of the month.

Dissolution by Nicholas Binge (March 25th)

Maggie Webb is caring for her elderly husband, who's been slowly losing his memory. When a stranger named Hassancomes to her door, he brings some shocking news: his memories aren't being lost to disease; someone is stealing them, in order to prevent a long-held secret from being unburied. He helps Maggie break into her husband's mind to try and save him, only to discover a mystery that stretches back centuries and across the world, and that the stakes are higher than she ever could have thought.

Kirkus Reviews says "time travel, mass extinction, the end of the world: It’s all here in a storyline that twists and turns like a spacecraft in a wormhole, rocketing toward an unforeseeable and unresolved ending.

Tideborn by Eliza Chan (March 25th)

Eliza Chan follows up last year's Fathomfolk with a sequel, Tideborn. The books are set in the half-submerged city of Tiankawi, which had been a peaceful place where humans lived alongside fathomfolk – sirens, seawitches, kelpies and kappas. They've been largely at peace, but tensions had begun to rise.

That rift exploded after a fathomfolk princess was exiled to the city, and Mira, a half-siren activist has uncovered a conspiracy while the princess Nami undertakes a daring voyage to try and convince a Titan to spare the city.

Publishers Weekly says "Though the story can be dense, readers will be captivated by Tiankawi’s atmospheric, postapocalyptic universe."

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (March 18th)

Suzanne Collins returns to the world of The Hunger Games with a new, fifth entry: Sunrise on the Reaping. She released her first prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes back in 2020, which was set 64 years prior to the events in that first book. This one is set 24 years prior to that book, just as the 50th Hunger Games begin, which Haymitch Abernathy will eventually win – but at a considerable cost.

The Mune by Sue Dawes (March 25th)

Thirty women are picked up from asylums, streets, and workhouses of Victorian England and are dumped onto an island in an alternative universe. There, they're forced to rethink their lives and the structures of their world while they're forced to survive and form a new society as they're surrounded by strange landscapes and dangerous creatures.

The Gate of the Feral Gods by Matt Dinniman (March 11th)

Matt Dinniman continues the adventures of Carl, Princess Donut, and Mongo as they make their way through a dungeon constructed by aliens to test humanity. This is the fourth installment of the series, following Dungeon Crawler Carl, Carl's Doomsday Scenario, and The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook, with the next two installments coming later this year: The Butcher's Masquerade (April) and The Eye of the Bedlam Bride (May).

In this installment, the crew have to contend with a new level that features four castles: one occupied by warrior gnomes, one made of sand, a submarine, and a haunted crypt, all of which they need to capture within 15 days, and this time, Carl has to rely on some of the other crawlers who're also fighting to survive – if he can learn to trust them.

The Third Rule of Time Travel by Philip Fracassi (March 18th)

In Philip Fracassi's new novel, time travel has been invented, but there are some strict rules: You can only travel to a point within your lifetime, you can only be there for 90 seconds, and you can't do anything but observe. That's it.

Is that really it though? A scientist named Beth Darlow travels back in time, and has been observing her past, only to have her project taken from under her, even as she's on the brink of a breakthrough. The people funding her project aren't interested in her discoveries, just how they can make a profit off of it, and the decision will drive her to make some desperate choices.

rekt by Alex Gonzalez (March 25th)

26-year-old Sammy Dominguez has grown up around the darker places on the internet and is particularly drawn to the bloody and violent urban legends that pop up on obscure forums. After surviving a car accident that kills his girlfriend, he's invited by a user called Haruspx to a disturbing site called chinsky, where he finds a deepfaked video of the car accident and becomes obsessed with it as he tries to track down its creator.

Publishers Weekly says "the intense ugliness of the subject matter and dark sense of humor won’t be for everyone, but extreme horror fans who grew up on the internet will find plenty to hold their attention."

Life Became Very Blurry: An Oral History of COVID-19 in Vermont, edited by Garrett M. Graff (March 25th)

The COVID-19 pandemic started in earnest in the U.S. 5 years ago this month, and in conjunction with that milestone, we at the Vermont Historical Society are publishing a new book that brings together more than 100 voices from our oral history project about the pandemic.

Back in 2022, we launched a major oral history project to capture stories about the COVID-19 pandemic, and tasked noted Vermont author and journalist Garrett M. Graff with compiling the interviews we collected (more than 100 of them!) into a cohesive narrative. The result is this book. It's a difficult read of a grim time in our lives, but it's an important work that looks back at the community's response here in the state.

(If you're in Vermont, we'll be holding a book launch for it at Bear Pond Books on March 27th.) Stay tuned: I'll have a couple of posts that I'll put up about this in the next couple of days.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones (March 18th)

Stephen Graham Jones has been steadily knocking books out of the park, such as The Only Good Indian and My Heart is a Chainsaw. His next is The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, a historical horror novel set in 1912, following a Lutheran priest who took down the story of Good Stab, a Blackfeet man who haunted a reservation looking for revenge.

Kirkus Reviews gave the book a starred review, saying "While a vampire Western could easily have become a farce, Jones crafts it into a rich tapestry that winds around questions of identity, heritage, and historical truth, all pivoting on a real historical atrocity, the Marias Massacre, where almost 200 Native people were murdered by the U.S. Army in January 1870."

Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era by Adam Kotsko (March 25th)

Star Trek has been a huge presence in the world of science fiction media, and this new book from Adam Kotsko looks like it'll be an interesting examination of the franchise's recent history, starting with the live action series Enterprise and up through the trio of Kelvin-era films and the recent spate of shows streaming on Paramount+, as well as the books and comics.

But more than this franchise, it's an examination of the larger idea of these inter-connected worlds that drive the franchises that have taken over popular culture.

The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal (March 18th)

Mary Robinette Kowal has written some of my favorite near-future, hard science fiction stories in the form of Lady Astronaut series. The first three books, The Calculating Stars, The Fated Sky, and The Relentless Moon explore an alternate history where an asteroid impact caused a runaway global warming scenario, prompting humanity to stand up a space program and begin looking to not only go into space, but to build colonies on the Moon and Mars.

In this final installment of the series, we've set up a colony on Mars, and when Elma York off to help with its construction, she realizes that something's a bit off: something has been hidden about the nature of the first expedition, and when they try and find details, they're stonewalled. Left unexposed, those secrets could have a devastating impact on the future of humanity.

A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, illustrated by Fred Fordham (March 11th)

Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea is one of my favorite fantasy novels, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that her estate has authorized a new adaptation of the book: a graphic novel illustrated by Fred Fordham. I'm looking forward to checking this one out as soon as I get my hands on it.

Transmentation Transience: Or, an Accession to the People's Council for Nine Thousand Worlds by Darkly Lem (March 18th)

One of the projects that I've been fascinated by is Many Worlds, a collaborative writing group that includes Cadwell Turnbull. It inspired a neat anthology, Many Worlds: Or, the Simulacra, and members of the writing group have come together as "Darkly Lem" to produce a new novel: Transmentation Transience: Or, an Accession to the People's Council for Nine Thousand Worlds.

Over millennia and across thousands of worlds, societies of interdimensional travelers and explorers have worked to explore the cosmos. When a training mission goes wrong, two such societies are brought into conflict: intelligence officer Malculm Kilkeneade of the Burel Hird group is blamed for an assassination attempt, while the Roamers of Tala Beinir and Shara also find themselves swept up in it. Their involvement sets into motion plans that could ripple across the Many Worlds.

Splinter Effect by Andrew Ludington (March 18th)

In this debut novel, an archeologist named Rabbit Ward accompanies expeditions back in time to try and locate and preserve artifacts before they're lost to history. It hasn't always been successful: two decades ago, he lost both a precious menorah and his mentee, Aaron. When evidence appears that the artifact might not have been destroyed, it's a rare chance at redemption and he heads off to 6th century Constantinople.

Things start to go wrong: he finds that there's someone else after the menorah and the Jewish population in the city are under considerable pressure: a revolution is brewing, and it's going to take all of his skills to survive the trip.

Publishers Weekly says "Rabbit’s quick wit and fast fists make him a winning protagonist, and though the book’s home stretch feels a bit rushed, Ludington demonstrates a knack for fleet action sequences."

The Expert of Subtle Revisions: A Novel by Kirsten Menger-Anderson (March 18th)

I always find meta-texts to be really fascinating, and this one looks to be particularly interesting. In 2016, a woman named Hase was set to meet her father in Half Moon Bay in California. When he didn't show, she went to plan B: to to the Berkley library, find a book and follow the instructions that she finds. Jumping back to 1933, a man named Anton arrives in Vienna to start his job as a mathematician and finds himself part of an group of scholars who've been targeted by an anti-intellectual mob.

Hase spends her time editing Wikipedia entries and is soon contacted by someone looking for her father. He's a representative of an organization called the Zedlacher Institute, and they're working to figure out the mysteries of time travel, and that she's tied up in this larger story somehow.

Writing for The Los Angeles Times, Ilana Masad says "As Hase herself knows from editing Wikipedia, neither history nor language are neutral, and Menger-Anderson superbly demonstrates how a writer needn’t shy away from the political tensions of a historical period but can use them to heighten and contextualize setting, character and plot.

Perdido Street Station (Limited Edition) by China Miéville (March 18th)

The Folio Society's next limited edition release will be of China Miéville's acclaimed novel Perdido Street Station, the first of his Bas-Lag novels (it's followed by The Scar and Iron Council). Like many of Folio Society's other limited editions, this one will feature a special box as well as artwork by Doug Bell. This one goes on sale today and it seems to have been selling quickly.

Space Brooms! by A. G. Rodriguez (March 25th)

Johnny Gomez is the one guy on Kilgore Station that is having a rough time. The station is a luxury resort where humans, augmented people, and aliens kick back and relax. Johnny's the one that has to clean up after them. He had originally set out for the station in search of adventure and fortune, but didn't quite find it.

All of that changes when he comes across a glass data drive, something that everyone in the solar system is also trying to get their hands on. Aided by a couple of friends, Johnny sets off for the Moon, hoping to sell the chip to the Obinna Crime Syndicate, but will first have to contend with everyone coming after him – and his own past.

When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi (March 25th)

I've long been a fan of John Scalzi's novels, from his serious space operas like Old Man's War or The Collapsing Empire, to his comedic, lighter reads like Fuzzy Nation and Kaiju Preservation Society.

His latest looks like it'll be both fun and somethin of an experiment: the moon turns into cheese and humanity has to figure out what to do. It's a funny premise, but what has my interest piqued is the structure of this book: it's divided up into chapters that surround this event, sometimes with their own characters, sometimes with some throughline, all playing into a bigger narrative. It's something I've liked about his books like The Human Division and The End of All Things.

Kirkus Reviews gave the book a starred review, saying "Scalzi’s premise is absurd, but it’s merely the pretext to take a multifaceted, satiric look at how Americans deal with large-scale crisis, something we’re abundantly and recently familiar with, and will no doubt experience again in the not-so-distant future."

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (March 18th)

Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a new body aboard an interstellar generation ship, the HMS Fairweather, where the minds of the passengers are uploaded into the Library while they make the long journey. She's one of the ship's detectives and has been awoken because another passenger was murdered – and chillingly, their mind has been deleted out of the Library as well.

Kirkus Reviews says "intelligent and always surprising, Waite’s book artfully weaves a queer love story into a unique mystery/science fiction hybrid form that is pure entertainment from start to finish."

The Prince Without Sorrow by Maithree Wijesekara (March 18th)

Maithree Wijesekara kicks off a trilogy with The Prince Without Sorrow, inspired by the Mauryan Empire. It follows Prince Ashoka, the youngest son of a brutal emperor, Adil Maurya.

Ashoka went against his father's crusade against witches, and has been cast out of the royal court. When his father dies, he's dispatched to a remote part of the empire to try and quell some of the problems there that are being caused by spirits. At the same time, a mayakari (a witch) named Shakti has been bound by a pacifistic code, but after her family is murdered by the emperor's forces, she's bent on exacting revenge. The two will eventually collide, and each have to contend with the nature of power and its consequences.

First Contact: Speculative Visions of the Conquest of the Americas by Zac Zimmer (March 15th)

I'm always interested to find new books that explore the nature of speculative fiction, and this volume from Zac Zimmer seems like it'll do just that: it's an examination of the colonization of America through first-contact narratives, examining the types of artwork that tackle this gigantic topic.

As always, thanks for reading. Let me know in the comments what you're reading and what catches your eye on this list.