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If you’re asking yourself what dark fantasy and sci-fi books published in 2026 you need to be reading, we’ve got you covered. The first half of 2026 has been full of grimdark gems. We here at Grimdark Magazine have been very lucky to get tons of amazing review opportunities, and this list is full of the bangers of 2026 thus far. If you’re looking for something incredible and new–and regardless if you’re a fan of dark fantasy, sci-fi, or horror–we’ve got you covered.
Okay, I am just going to admit upfront that I have absolutely no idea how coherent this review is going to be because Ed Crocker genuinely scrambled my brain in the best possible way with Moonfall, and I fear I will never be able to do it justice without sounding completely unhinged. I mean, I don’t know if I find it more rude or disgustingly brilliant how this book full of inexplicably loveable immortal bastards feels like it was written with the sole intent of killing me, but I love it all the more for it.
Read our review here!
The thrilling sequel to Lightfall, a fantasy epic of revolution set in a world of vampires, werewolves, and sorcerers, for fans of Jay Kristoff’s Empire of the Vampire and Cassandra Clare’s Swordcatcher.

The revolution is here… but in the Everlands, nothing comes easy.
In the last vampire city of First Light, the rebels know the truth about the Grays. But nothing has changed. Sam has a plan to bring the whole rotten city down: a plan of peace, not violence. But in this city, the best laid plans have a way of falling apart, and she’ll need the help of the city’s ex ruler and former enemy if she’s to avoid a bloodbath.
Meanwhile, in the Wolflands, Jacob, Sage, and Raven must seek help from the wolves. But when a murder is committed, the land threatens to descend into war, and unless the culprit is found, they might not escape with their lives. But with a long list of suspects and a long set of claws out for them, the odds don’t look good.
And then there’s Neuras Sinassion. History’s most dangerous sorcerer has decided it’s finally time to tell his secrets and the truth about the humans. But the truth will come at a price.
When the dust has settled and the bodies are counted, only one thing is certain―the Everlands will never be the same again.

At its heart, The Poet Empress is an ode to survival, and the lengths one will take to return home. Shen Tao’s debut is slicing and heart wrenching, and now holds a standard for fantasy standalones that few other books could reach. I look forward, immensely, to reading more of this author’s work.
Read our full review here!
The Poet Empress by Shen Tao book Cover Image
Debut author Shen Tao introduces readers to the lush, deadly world of The Poet Empress, a sweeping, epic and intimate fantasy perfect for fans of The Serpent & the Wings of Night, The Song of Achilles and She Who Became the Sun.
Wei Yin is desperate. After the fifth death of a sibling, with her family and village on the brink of starvation, she will do anything to save those she loves.
Even offer herself as concubine to the cruel, dissolute heir of the blood-gutted Azalea House―where poetry magic is power, but women are forbidden to read.
But in a twist of fate, the palace now stands on the knife-edge of civil war, with Wei trapped in its center. . . with a violent prince.
To save herself and the nation, she must survive the dangers of court, learn to read in secret, and compose the most powerful spell of all. A ballad of love. . . and death.
The Poet Empress is an epic fantasy that explores darker themes, subjects, and scenes that may not be suitable for all readers. Please see the author’s content note at the beginning of the book.

Daughter of Crows is grimdark to the core, but with a sense of literary maturity that the genre rarely sees outside of Anna Smith Spark. Daughter of Crows is saturated with venom, vengeance, and violence, while also serving as a deeply emotional commentary on age, guilt, memory, and survival. Altogether, Daughter of Crows stands as a powerful reaffirmation of Mark Lawrence’s position at the forefront of grimdark fantasy.
Read our review here!
The survivor of a brutal academy must exhume her own past in the first book in a new series from the international bestselling author of the Library Trilogy and the Broken Empire series.
Set a thief to catch a thief. Set a monster to punish monsters.
The Academy of Kindness exists to create agents of retribution, cast in the image of the Furies—known as the kindly ones—against whom even the gods hesitate to stand. Each year a hundred girls are sold to the Academy. Ten years later only three will emerge.
The Academy’s halls run with blood. The few that survive its decade-long nightmare have been forged on the sands of the Wound Garden. They have learned ancient secrets amid the necrotic fumes of the Bone Garden. They leave its gates as avatars of vengeance, bound to uphold the oldest of laws.
Only the most desperate would sell their child to the Kindnesses. But Rue … she sold herself. And now, a lifetime later, a long and bloody lifetime later, just as she has discovered peace, war has been brought to an old woman’s doorstep.
That was a mistake.

Miles Lyon apparently looked into my soul, took notes, and then chose violence by delivering all of my favourite things about grimdark fantasy in The Price of Fear. I love a framed narrative, I love a snarky, melodramatic bastard of an anti-hero who has done awful things and will absolutely tell you about them with a straight face and a bad attitude, I love magic that comes with a cost, and I love razorsharp dialogue paired with dark humour that makes you cry tears of laughter while everything is actively burning down. In other words, yes, I am the exact target audience for this book, and I absolutely ate it up in all its grimdark glory.
Read our review here!
For a Godless like Azreal the Wretched, peace might be a more profitable time, but it’s no less bloody…
A decade into the armistice with Inath, the North, once united against invasion, finds itself a divided kingdom. Azreal – an infamous mage of the Northern military – operates in his native land as a contract killer, employed to hunt traitors by a king who is squabbling against his would-be usurpers.
But when the completion of his latest bounty unveils a foreign plot to dethrone the North altogether, Azreal is the only one who can cross the border and respond in kind…
Or he would have been, until betrayal at the final moment resulted in his killing of the wrong man and capture by those that he’s spent half his life fighting.
Now, imprisoned and awaiting his execution for the murder of an Inathian crown prince, Azreal finds himself across the interrogation table from Anamira Lestrade. A career criminal investigator, Ana is tasked with extracting the truth behind the assassination or dying in failure – linking the two through one last story that could stave off both their gruesome ends.
Possessed of few friends, countless enemies, magic blades that feast on his emotions, and the haunting rumors of how he won his name, Azreal the Wretched’s narrative pits him against traitorous conspiracy, brutal magical feuds, and broken promises of love. And if there is any hope of making it out alive at its end, he’ll need to conquer the price it cost him to paint the tale red:
Fear.

Fated prophecy and fated love; Veronica Roth is bringing us dystopian sci-fi/fantasy in an entirely new package. Seek the Traitor’s Son is an immersive and electric story, and an ode to how far we’d be willing to go for what is expected of us, and of what we expect of ourselves.
Read our review here!
An epic, romantic dystopian fantasy begins in Seek the Traitor’s Son, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth
Elegy Ahn did not ask for destiny to find her.
She is happy with her life as a soldier, defending her small country from the Talusar, a powerful nation who worships a deadly Fever. A fever that blesses half of its victims with mysterious gifts.
But then she’s summoned to hear a prophecy–her, and the most ruthless of Talusar generals, Rava Vidar. Brought face to face, they learn that one of them will lead their people to victory over the other…but they don’t know which. And at the center of both of their fates: a man. A man that, Elegy is told, she will fall in love with.
In just one day, Elegy’s old life–her job, her purpose, and her future–is over. She and Rava are destined to collide, with the fate of their nations hanging in the balance. And when they do, only one will be left standing.
Elegy intends to make sure it’s her.

Headlights is an utterly stunning novel; one of those books you hand over reverently to a friend who asks why you read horror. Wrapped within one of the most disturbing concepts ever to grace the genre is an utterly beautiful reflection on overcoming trauma, seeking freedom, and the afterlife. Not just one of the best horror books you’ll ever read but one that has the capacity to change you permanently.
Read our review here! 
Every instinct tells him to run. Every memory tells him he can’t.

Special Agent Daniel Stansfield is ready for a change. Burnt out and defeated by the job, it’s his last day with the FBI. But before he can turn in his badge, he’s summoned back to Denver, the city he ran from four years ago, with a chilling message: it’s happening again.
Seemingly innocent people are waking up on the side of the highway, with no memory of how they got there, wearing the skin of victims they’ve allegedly never met. And they each share one haunting detail: a strand of a stranger’s hair is tied around their tongue.
Now Daniel is pulled back into the gruesome cycle, and every clue leads him deeper into the shadows of his own past. He will have to confront the ghosts of his traumatic childhood and face what’s been hunting him all along― before he and the people he loves become the next victims.
Headlights is both a heartfelt examination on grief and a love letter to Stephen King’s The Shining in this pulse-pounding hunt across the frozen wilderness of Colorado by bestselling author CJ Leede.

Well, I made absolutely no secret of the fact that Whispers of the Storm was one of my favourite reads of last year, but I was still somehow not remotely prepared for how much Z.B. Steele would blow me away with Rising Gale. This is one of those sequels that takes everything that worked in the first book and then just cranks it up to an unholy degree of brilliance. It’s darker, bloodier, sharper, more tragic, more brutal, more poignant, and somehow even more melodramatic in a way that really should not work but absolutely does.
Read our review here!
My execution draws near…
The noose beckons. My days dwindle. And still, my story is unfinished.
Tears are left to be shed. Blood has yet to be spilled. Lend me your ear once more to hear of sins and failures. Of swords and shadows. Of violet lightning and black blood.
For it was I who began the war of the gods.
A moody, banter-laced, violent, and poetic framed story – Z.B. Steele presents Rising Gale, book two of Song of the Damned.

The Girl with a Thousand Faces is a book strident in its ambition narratively, thematically, and tonally; a non-stop ride of horror and humanity that seeks to honour the forgotten even as it takes your breath away with one of the best twists of the year. As multifaceted as its titular avenging spirit, this towering edifice of carefully constructed speculative fiction mastery confirms Dean as one of the genre’s true artisans.
Read our review here!
The Girl with a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean book Cover Image
From the USA Today bestselling author of The Book Eaters comes The Girl with a Thousand Faces, a stunning Gothic tale set in a historical Hong Kong that meshes ancient myths and local legends into a haunting story of ghosts, grief, and women who will not forgive.
When Mercy Chan washes up on the shores of Hong Kong with no family, no money, and no memories, the only refuge she finds is the infamous, ghost-infested slum of Kowloon Walled City. Since then, she has rebuilt her life, working for the local triad as a ghost talker and dealing with the angry and bitter spirits who haunt the district. The filthy gutters and cramped alleyways of Kowloon have become her home.
But the past Mercy can’t remember isn’t done with her. An unusually powerful ghost has infested Kowloon’s waterways, drowning innocents and threatening the district. It claims to know Mercy―and secrets from her past that are best left forgotten.
As Mercy is drawn into a deadly cat-and-mouse game with this malignant spirit, she begins to realize that the monster she fights within these walls may well be one of her own making.

It is not often that a debut release knocks it out of the park quite as well as Cameron Sullivan’s The Red Winter; this book deserves all the hype it is getting and more. I have described The Red Winter as the book baby of Richard Swan’s The Justice of Kings and Jay Kristoff’s Nevernight, and I had an excellent time with this tale, loosely based on the French legend of the hunt for the Beast of Gévaudan. If you like your fantasy dark, with a historical twist, this is a blood-soaked story you are sure to enjoy.
Read our full review here!
A devastating love story. A bewitching twist on history. A blood-drenched hunt for purpose, power, and redemption.
In 1785, Professor Sebastian Grave receives the news he fears most: the terrible Beast of Gévaudan has returned, and the French countryside runs red in its wake.
Sebastian knows the Beast. A monster-slayer with centuries of experience, he joined the hunt for the creature twenty years ago and watched it slaughter its way through a long and bloody winter. Even with the help of his indwelling demon, Sarmodel – who takes payment in living hearts – it nearly cost him his life to bring the monster down.
Now, two decades later, Sebastian has been recalled to the hunt by Antoine Avenel d’Ocerne, an estranged lover who shares a dark history with the Beast and a terrible secret with Sebastian. Drawn by both the chance to finish the Beast for good and the promise of a reconciliation with Antoine, Sebastian cannot refuse.
But Gévaudan is not as he remembers it, and Sebastian’s unfinished business is everywhere he looks. Years of misery have driven the people to desperation, and France teeters on the edge of revolution. Sebastian’s arcane activities – not to mention his demonic counterpart – have also attracted the inquisitorial eye of the French clergy. And the Beast is poised to close his jaws around them all and plunge the continent into war.
Debut author Cameron Sullivan tears the heart out of history with this darkly entertaining retelling of the hunt for the Beast of Gévaudan. Lifting the veil on the hidden world behind our own, it reimagines the story of Europe, from Imperial Rome to Saint Jehanne d’Arc, the madness of Gilles de Rais and the first flickers of the French Revolution.

One of my most anticipated books of the year, The Demon Star, did not let me down. What an outstanding debut. This had it all and covered a span of genres like sci-fi, fantasy, and horror; how Aragon managed to take so many different aspects of things I love and combine them into a fearless, action-packed and thought-provoking story is a mystery, but The Demon Star did it all. And most importantly, did it well.
Read our full review here!
On a ruined planet oppressed by eldritch gods, a rebel leader forces his son to become the vessel of a god-killing demon. Caught in a conflict spanning galaxies and millennia, two unlikely allies must decide whether to save the child, their world, or themselves.
The otherworldly religious conflict of Dune, the cosmic strangeness of Gideon the Ninth, and the heart-pounding action of Red Rising converge in this horror-tinged epic science fantasy debut
Ysira Naktis was a human sacrifice, destined for death. But unlike the thousands “harvested” each year, she did the unthinkable. She survived—and what she brought back with her could rewrite the fate of her civilization.
When Ysira’s son is chosen for demonic possession, she is faced with a choice: allow him to harness cosmic power at an unspeakable cost or doom millions to save him. She finds an unlikely ally in Brother Jacen Kheris, once a gifted exorcist, now an addict desperate for purpose.
From a demon-haunted canyon to a starbound satellite, they must battle their way through cultists, aliens, and the gods themselves. The truths they unearth send them hurtling down a path that can only lead to apocalypse.

The Bone Door is a remarkably ambitious fantasy horror that delves its hand into that perilous box labelled “children + trauma” to produce one of the most emotionally stirring and powerfully messaged books of recent times, replete with a stunningly well executed, twisty, multi-layered plot and an emotional finale that destroys and nourishes in equal measure. This book is an enema of the emotions, and frankly a true speculative fiction classic in the making.
Read our full review here!
How far will you go to open The Bone Door?
When Hop awakens in an ancient labyrinth, he has no memory of his life, or how he got here. He does not recognise the mysterious girl trapped with him. And he certainly cannot identify the shadowy figure stalking him, whispering terrible things…
But there is one thing he is certain of: He must escape.
The only way out of the labyrinth is through The Bone Door. But it lies behind a series of locked doors hidden across an array of strange realms. To open the way, Hop must complete impossible tasks before his time runs out.
As Hop travels deeper into the maze, he discovers that he and his companions may be more connected to the place and its horrors than he could ever imagine.
Unless Hop is able to unravel the true mystery of the labyrinth, and his own role within it, the Bone Door and any hope of escape will be lost forever.

Three years ago Hiron Ennes burst onto the speculative scene with the startlingly original and compelling post-apocalyptic sci-fi, gothic suspense, and body horror mash-up Leech, essentially The Thing meets Rebecca, which gave us the memorable POV of a parasite. It was the kind of debut that fast forwards an author to must-buy status, and now they’ve returned with The Works of Vermin, and though my expectations were higher than the career aspirations of a six year old, I simply wasn’t prepared for the frankly genre-defining masterpiece that landed in my eyeballs.
Read our full review here!
Enter the decadent, deadly city of Tiliard, a metropolis carved into the stump of an ancient tree. In its canopy, the pampered elite warp minds with toxic perfume; in its roots, gangs of exterminators hunt a colossal worm with an appetite for beauty.
In this complex, chaotic city, Guy Moulène has a simple goal: keep his sister out of debt. For her sake, he’ll take on any job, no matter how vile.
As an exterminator, Guy hunts the uncanny creatures that crawl up from the river. These vermin are all strange, and often dangerous. His latest quarry is different: a centipede the size of a dragon with a deadly venom and a ravenous taste for artwork. As it digests Tiliard from the sewers to the opera houses, its toxin reshapes the future of the city. No sane person would hunt it, if they had the choice.
Guy doesn’t have a choice.

A cross between Pride & Prejudice and Wuthering Heights, set against a backdrop of ghosts, demons and magic – Weavingshaw is a perfect melting pot of gothic horror and regency romance. Al-Wasity’s writing is compelling and simply unputdownable. What a feat of a debut, truly.
Read our full review here!
Leena didn’t believe in monsters until she saw Weavingshaw.

The Saint of Silence trades coins for every sordid divulgence uttered to him: the darker the secret, the higher the price.
Leena has a secret, one that has haunted her since she was seventeen—she can see the dead. When her brother falls ill, she knows she must seek the Saint to afford a remedy.
But Leena’s secret is more valuable than she could have imagined. To save her brother, she will make a deal to find the ghost the Saint has been searching for.
All paths lead to Weavingshaw, a cursed estate on the moors. As Leena grows closer to the Saint and is plunged into his world of danger, deceit, and desire, she learns that he is hiding his own secrets—ones with the power to destroy them all.

With the oppressive society of Nineteen Eighty-four, the electric writing and space opera of The Expanse, and the new world building of Legacy of Heorot, Richard Swan has announced himself outside of the dark fantasy genre. The Infinite State is a tour-de-force in science fiction storytelling that has me absolutely chomping at the bit for the rest of the Decurion Saga.
Read our full review here!
THE INFINITE STATE begins at a flashpoint in the lives of a widowed party member, a disgraced investigator, and a hypersled pilot—entangled in a plot to escape the suffocating authority of a fascist state.
WHO GIVES YOU LIFE?
PATER AETERNUS.
Katherine Fuller’s husband is dead. As an esteemed member of Pater Aeternus—governing party of the fascist, galaxy-spanning Decurion Empire—he has left behind an estate of immeasurable wealth. And Katherine is going to inherit it.
WHO GIVES YOU PURPOSE?
PATER AETERNUS.
Life under the Eternal Father is rigidly stratified, surveilled, and controlled—each new day to be endured, not lived. But with Katherine’s newfound fortune, she is presented with a rare and dangerous opportunity: purchase a virgin world, and create a better, fairer society.
WHO GIVES YOU JOY?
PATER AETERNUS.
But the Empire cannot allow its wayward daughter to succeed. And as Katherine works in secret, recruiting allies she’s not even sure she can trust, she will discover exactly how far Pater Aeternus is willing to go to stop her. Because Katherine is going to create something nobody has seen for many years.
A democracy.

Then definitely check out the best books of:
 
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