Best Sci-Fi Fantasy Books With Anthony Jeselnik | House of Reads
House of R
Host Joanna Robinson shares her top science fiction and fantasy book recommendations, ranging from recent favorites to long-standing classic
Key takeaways
- Joanna highlights Alix Harrow's 'The Everlasting' as a Hugo Award winner for best novel.
- Anthony Jeselnik discusses using his new Ringer podcast to encourage men to engage more with literature.
Main topics
- Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Recommendations
- Must-Read Authors
Notable quotes
I think the way that I write my jokes, I couldn't do it if I wasn't reading so much.
Conclusion
A comprehensive guide for genre fiction enthusiasts looking for new au
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) you Speaker 2 (0:16) Hello and welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson and it's kind of just me here today with a bunch of books. This is the long promised House of Reads episode where I'm going to be talking about a lot of books that I love that I want to recommend and we got a lot of listener recommendations as well. So we're going to go through these piles of books that I have in front of me if you're watching this. Quick programming reminders just in general. Next week, we only have one pod. Mallory will be here, of course, and we'll be talking about WandaVision. We're doing a WandaVision rewatch in advance of Vision Quest, so that's something we're really excited about. You can send us emails about WandaVision or books I forgot to mention. You can send those to hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com, as always. Follow us on social at House of Our Pod. Follow the pod wherever you get your pods, et cetera, et cetera. I will be talking about these books. We also have a guest on the pod this week. I'm really excited. Anthony Jeselnik, who has just launched a new Ringer podcast called Jeselnik Book Club. He's been doing the Jeselnik Book Club for a while, but he just launched the podcast. So we will have a section at the end of this pod. where Anthony and I talk about some of his sci-fi fantasy recommendations. And what's really cool about that, actually, is that he and I have similar but somewhat different reading tastes. And so a lot of his recommendations were ones that I had either heard of and not gotten to or maybe hadn't even heard of at all. So I think he's got a lot of sort of out-of-the-box recommendations that nonetheless fall under the bucket of sci-fi fantasy genre storytelling. So it's really exciting to have. a different voice on the pod to make some recommendations of books that you might not have heard of. So that is the plan today. We've got a couple different categories. And then I'm just going to go through the books here and recommend them to you and stare down the camera while I do that if you're watching this at home. If you want to know about the books that we're recommending, we will have a list of all of them in our show notes. Shout out to Carlos Cheruboga for his tireless work on this podcast. So we will have a list of at least the books that I am sort of recommending and talking about at length. They will be in the show notes. You can get those on Spotify and on YouTube. If you're just listening to this, I will be. just talk about books so you can always listen to this, but there is a visual component if you're watching this as well at home. I've never done a talk at a camera for a really long time podcast, so we're just going to go on this journey together surrounded by our Speaker 1 (2:44) friends, the books. Speaker 2 (2:46) We're going to start off on a high note with what I'm calling the best books I've read this year, and I'm going to start with a slight cheat. Speaker 2 (2:56) That's because this book, The Everlasting by Alex Harrow, I did technically read at the end of last year. It came out October 2025. But it just won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. So I thought that I should talk about it. We've talked about it a little bit on the pod before. Mallory's read it as well. She really, really loved it. But The Everlasting is a complicated time travel story about a... star-crossed mystery, a reedy professor, and then a badass lady knight sort of in the vein of Brienne of Tarth. And basically it's set in an alternate reality where he has read of her legend. He has studied it. He is a historian. He has studied her legend. And then he goes back in time and meets her. And then there's just this back and forth mystery as they loop sort of Groundhog's Day style. through this epic to figure out exactly what happened in the past. And it is just incredibly complicated, but actually emotionally perfect. And I just loved this book. And we're going to talk about Alex Harrow again in another category, but Everlasting Alex Harrow. The Raven Scholar, which came out last year, it came out 2025, but I read it this year. The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson is next on my list. I don't have a copy to show the camera because I lent it to a friend, and that's the best reason to not have a copy of the book. But The Raven Scholar, which was highly recommended to me, I read it in, I don't know, 48 hours. It's a huge book. I read it in 48 hours because I couldn't stop reading it. It is incredible. The premise is, and the second book, The Fox in Winter, is coming out October next year. Speaker 2 (4:41) Get in now, and then we can all talk about the fox in winter next year when it comes out. But here's the premise of the Raven Scholar. Seven contenders compete in legitimate fashion for a throne. Along the way, one of them is murdered. Our protagonist must find out who and see justice done. But she's also been named the replacement seventh contender. So it's a competition of thrones, sort of like Hunger Games-y style. Last man standing gets the throne. kind of competition. The world building's incredible. The various houses that compete are just really, really fun. And I just had, I was just really emotionally pulled in and really dazzled by the world building in that one. So The Raven Scholar, I cannot recommend enough. And then this one just came out, this next one, Deadbeat by Leigh Bardugo. I got it at Romans. Shout out Romans, my new favorite Los Angeles bookstore. Speaker 2 (5:35) But Deadbeat by Leigh Bardugo, which I also read in about a 48-hour, maybe 36-hour span, is the third in the Ninth House trilogy. So I've talked about the Ninth House trilogy before. Deadbeat was on my hype meter that we did last month, or in August, rather. Yeah, but it's set in a magical Yale. Speaker 2 (5:59) The premise of this series is like, what if the Da Vinci Code or National Treasure were actually smart? Sorry to Dan Brown, not sorry. But so basically at Yale, you might know, at Yale there are these actual secret societies. You might have heard of Skull and Bones or Skrull and Key or St. Elmo. Like these are actual secret societies that exist at Yale. And what Leigh Bardugo did is she took these secret societies and she wondered, What if all of these rich, powerful families at Yale who belong to these secret societies, what if they were doing magical rituals to make sure that they stayed as wealthy and powerful as possible? So that's sort of the premise of this magical Yale. And what she does, and it's so cool, is she takes all of these actual buildings and inscriptions and statues and... Speaker 2 (6:51) that are all around the campus and all around New Haven and constructs this giant mythology around them. So she takes actual places and actual content of Yale's history and makes it into this like wide ranging mythological story. The protagonist of this series is Alex Stern, who is a girl who is too poor and too bad at school to ever get into Yale. But Yale wants her because they want her there because she has a special power. which she can see ghosts among other things. And so she's brought into Yale on a scholarship basically to be used for her powers. And it's a found family story. There's a lot of yearning. There's a trip to hell in the second book, which is called Hell Bent. And this is the conclusion of the trilogy. And it was so, so good. Magical heists galore. This world is incredible. I'm sad to leave it. I'm sad it's over. I'm hoping that she figures out a way to do more stories inside of this world. But deadbeat. Leigh Bardugo. So, so incredibly good. And then the last on sort of the best books I read this year is a super, super fun one, which is a duology by Bridget Knightley. And I listened to this on audio, so I don't have a physical book to show you. But the two titles are The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy and The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy. And these are, yes, based on Drominey, Draco and Hermione fan fiction. I'm just going to describe the plot to you. A very wealthy blonde assassin, guess who, who is dying from the cost of using his lethal gift, and a curly-haired know-it-all healer, guess who, who needs his money to cure children, basically, to do good in the world. So he basically, like, bribes her, blackmails her into helping him, and they go on a series of adventures in order to try to cure him. He's dying from... basically overuse of his magic. And so when I talk about on other pods, Mallory and I talk about the cost of using magic. This is an example of a story where that is done really, really well of like, what, what is the cost? of all of these magical gifts. There are so many magically gifted people in these stories, and sometimes the cost is sort of psychological. Sometimes it's emotional. In this case, it's lethal and physical. These books are very light and frothy, a sort of absurd Terry Pratchett, very like... The language is very sophisticated and advanced and very British sounding, but the situations are kind of absurd and silly. It's dual narration, so the way in which these characters are completely unaware of their own emotions is really, really fun. And it's a little more mature than you might guess based on that premise. That sounds YA. It is kind of YA. But I will say, in the second book, content warning for some spice. So just so you know. This is an excellent, excellent audiobook experience. I really, really recommend it. So that's The Irresistible Urge, To Fall for Your Enemy, slash The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy by Bridget Knightley. It's called The Dearly Beloathed Duology. So those are my, like, books of the year that I've read so far. But I have a ton to get to because you guys gave me incredible recommendations, and I will get to those in a minute. My next section that I want to talk to you about, I'm calling A Series Affair. And these are series that I'm in the middle of where new books are coming out. I am heavily anticipating them. If a new installment comes out, I am getting it without question. So the first two are sort of obvious. And it's The Fourth Wing, The Empyrean Saga, The Fourth Wing Books, and Akatar, A Court of Thorn and Roses, the Sarah J. Maas books. And I will say that these two series are not my favorites by far, but they're so popular and they're so fun to talk about, even if I'm frustrated by them, that I always want to stay on top of them. So there's a new A Court of Thorn and Roses book, A Court of Splinted Harmony by Sarah J. Moss is the sixth A Court of Thorn and Roses book. So that one's coming out in October. And then there's a fourth wing sort of novella called Threshing Day. Um, I generally think these books are painfully derivative and very badly written, but I think they're really fun to read and they're really fun to talk about. Um, so Threshing Day, uh, a bunch of stories from the point of view of characters from other, uh, from other books in the series talking about how they went and claimed their dragons in the first place and got into the Academy, et cetera, et cetera. So that is, um. That is something that is on everyone's minds, but I would not say I'm personally heavily invested in. I am personally heavily invested in The Anna and Din Mysteries by Robert Jackson Brown. The first book is called Tainted Cup, which I don't have a copy of because I lent it to a friend. Again, a great reason not to have a copy of. But I do have a drop of Corruption here, which is the second book. These are just beautiful books to own, by the way. The third one, A Trade of Blood. Speaker 2 (12:06) Is either coming out or is just out and I haven't gotten to yet. But the Anna and Din mysteries are called biopunk. Instead of steampunk, it's biopunk. It's these really cool. Basically, Anna and Din are sort of. Holmes and Watson, she's an incredible detective. He's her man on the street out there sort of gathering data for her. He has been genetically altered, so he has perfect recall of everything he's seen. So he goes out, gets all the clues, brings them back to her. She's a very odd character, and she sort of figures out what's going on. But there are these, they're always investigating these murders that... reveal a larger corruption inside of this world that they live in. And there's all these really cool biological fungal mossy kelpie algae sort of poisons and all of this going on. So it's a really, really cool world. A really, really great protagonist in Din, who's just like really charming and a great creation in Anna. So all of these books, The Tainted Cup. was my favorite. A Drop of Corruption was really good, the second one. But I've heard A Trait of Blood, the third one, is a lot of people think it's the best. I haven't read it yet, but I'm really, really excited with it. So these are also a really good audio experience, but these books are beautiful, so I like to own them as well. So that is my recommendation, The Anna and Dead Mysteries. The hierarchy epic. We have talked about this. Mallory and I have talked about this. The will of the many and the strength of the few. This is James Islington. So he's in the middle of this of this series. This is the second book. I could not find my copy of Will of the Many. So I just have the strength of the few here. The hierarchy book two. This is like a Roman-inspired fantasy world, which is a little unusual and quite fun. And it's a sort of a pyramid society where if you're at the top of the sort of class and wealth of this society, you get the strength and the power of all the people below you. It's sort of stratified that way. And they suck the power and the will of the people below them. So it's definitely sort of this class-based power system. But in the first book, our main character is sent to an academy. We love a magical academy, right? An academy to find answers to solve a murder, to search for an ancient weapon, and to uncover secrets that might tear the Republic apart. Mystery, action, suspense. I didn't think the second book was quite as good as the first book, but it was still way better than most books I read. And I'm really excited for the next one in the series. So huge fan. This author, James Islington, has a new book, Scion, which is being described as John Wick meets Blade Runner. So I haven't read Scion, but that one is his latest book. But I am in the middle of this series. And when the new book comes out, I will eagerly grab it up. So I just wanted to. I think a lot of people have read it based on the fact that Mallory and I have talked about it before. And Will, the many, is just one of the best fantasy books to come out in recent years. So that is that series. And then The Gates of Midnight, which is the third in the Golem and the Genie series by Helene Wecker. Sorry, Helene Wecker. The Golem and the Genie, the protagonists are a golem, which is a creature made of clay named Hava, and a mod who is a djinn, a genie, a creature of fire. And it's set, the first book is set in 1899 New York. And they're basically sort of these two magical creatures, a golem and a genie, who come to America and have to hide their fantastical natures and try to blend in in this sort of immigrant experience of America. The second book is set sort of pre-World War I. And then the third book, The Gates of Midnight, which just came out, is set in 1930s Chicago. So we've got... Yiddish folklore, Middle Eastern folklore, really, really meticulously researched historical detail, incredibly well written. So if you want if you want sort of something that feels like historical fiction with a fantastical element to it, that's what this series is. And the Gates of Midnight is the third and I believe final installment in the series. And then I don't have a copy here because this is another one that I've just listened to, but the Black Tongue series by Christopher Buhlman. The Black Tongue Thief is the first one. The Daughter's War was sort of a prequel-ish background character book. And then Thrice Bound Fool is coming out October 13th. So I haven't read that one yet. But I really loved The Black Tongue Thief and I liked The Daughter's War. Christopher Buhlman. Speaker 2 (16:50) These books are really fun. Don't look for a lot of depth of character or emotion, I would say. But if you want a sort of really fun adventuring book that you have a great time with, I would really, really recommend the Blockton series. So those are some series that I'm in the middle of and eagerly anticipating the next installment or final installment. The next section I wanted to do here is called Must Read Authors. And these are just authors where if they have a new book out, I'm reading it. End of story. That's it. It's pretty easy. I want to start with, let's start with Susanna Clark. Susanna Clark, who most people know from Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. She wrote this, The Ladies of Grace Adieu. But the book I want to talk about is called Piranesi. And this is an incredible book. It's not a new, new book. But I just wanted to mention that it's the basis for two really exciting upcoming adaptations. Laika, the animation studio behind Wildwood and Kubo and the Two Strings and Coraline and Box Trolls. You guys know that I love Laika, the stop motion animation studio. They're somehow making a movie out of this. And I actually I'll describe the premise to you in a second. And I don't know how they're going to do that. But that is what is happening. cannot believe it. And I really want you to read this book so you can sit in astonishment with me about it. I'm going to describe the premise now, and then I'm going to tell you about the other thing that's coming up based on this. So this book is told from the point of view of a very befuddled, bewildered narrator who lives in what he considers to be a mansion, but it's this sort of infinite rooms house. There are these statues and pillars and columns and all this sort of stuff. It's flooded. The tide comes in and out. The tide can kill you. You're with the narrator. You have no idea where he is. And he has no idea where he is. And his memory is all foggy. And so you figure out alongside him sort of what happened, what this place is, how he got here, what's going on. It is very dreamlike in that way. It's very surreal. It's very confusing. But then you hang with it and then it sort of all snaps into focus. It's an incredible reading experience. Speaker 2 (19:03) Laika's making a stop-motion animation film about this, which is going to be beautiful. Like, just imagining the water and stop-motion animation is really exciting. But maybe even more exciting, possibly, is the Royal Shakespeare Company is doing an immersive theatrical experience, Stratford-upon-Avon, next summer, summer 2027, where you can basically be in the world and you are... experiencing it along with the narrator. So sort of try to replicate the experience of reading the book inside of a live theater experience. Royal Shakespeare Company, invite me. I want to come. It looks incredible and is just sort of... This is one of those books where you're like, this is completely unadaptable. And both the Stop Motion Animation Studio and the Royal Shakespeare Company have said, bet, we're going to try to adapt it. So I'm really excited to see how that turns out. Speaker 2 (19:54) Next on, if they publish it, I'm reading it, is Rainbow Rowell. And a lot of Rainbow Rowell's books are not, I would not call them genre sci-fi fantasy books. So some of her favorites, I will, some of my favorites of hers, I'm not going to be talking about. But I did want to mention the Simon Snow series. The first one's Carry On. Second one's Wayward Son. And anyway, The Wind Blows. But the Simon Snow series, this is the premise. And this is, I think this is the last time I'm going to mention Harry Potter, but I'm going to mention Harry Potter again because this book series is clearly quite loosely a reinterpretation of Harry Potter. And what if Simon Snow, the chosen one, was maybe not so chosen? And what if his roommate, who's definitely not Draco Malfoy because he has brown hair and is a vampire. um was a posh snobby uh guy and what if the magic in this universe was based on common phrases that people say this is such a cool idea for a magical system inside of these these books they're really really good books they're really fun um this idea that like um carry on uh you know keep calm and carry on the sort of very british phrase that's a magical spell so these common phrases that people speak are magical spells. And the more common the phrases, the more powerful the magic is. And what's really fun about that idea is that in the second book, they do a cross-country trip in the U.S. and they have to learn, you know, these British kids on this cross-country trip, and they basically have to learn all new magical spells because American phrases are different than British phrases. And then there are dead zones where if there aren't people around. you can't use magic because you're drawing on the power of this sort of like collectively we all agree these phrases mean something. It's a really cool idea. She's an incredible, fun, emotional writer. These are incredibly emotional stories. They sound like YA. They kind of are, but I will give a spicy content warning for the third. I think it's the third book. But these books are incredible. I really, really love them. The Simon Snow books. And they're very, very gay. So if you're like, hey, man. I'm kind of mad about Harry Potter. I would like to be in this world, but make it gayer. That's what these books are. Let's see. What is next? T. Kingfisher. So T. Kingfisher is another author who I will always read. And Swordheart. Daggerbound is a new one that's out this year, but Swordheart is the one I want to talk about, which is, I believe I've recommended it on the podcast before. And if you're watching. I got this at the Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino. Shout out the Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino. One of my favorites. They have a cat. It's one of the best bookshops in the world. But Swordheart is about a knight who is trapped in a sword. He's trapped inside a sword. And this sort of loquacious woman who acquires the sword. And sort of like chaos and romance ensues. These are all very like romantic books. you know, A Sorcerer's Comes to Call, Nine Goblins. She's just like really vibing in that. Again, I'll cite Terry Pratchett, one of my favorite authors, like Terry Pratchett, Fairytale Reimagining Space. And every one of her books are delightful and I'm a huge fan. But if I were to recommend one, I would say Swordheart. But anytime I see a T. Kingfisher book, I'm gonna buy it. Next, Friend of the Pod. RF Kwong, Rebecca Kwong, Babel, Babel, which came out, you know, was like this huge hit on TikTok during the pandemic. I don't think I need to sell that one. It's sold a million copies. Catabasis, Mal and I have talked about. This is similar to Leigh Bardugo. This is a let's go to hell book. And the back says it's a hell of a story. Very cute. This is a really cool British edition. I'm going to do this for the video people. It's got these like really cool edges, sprayed edges and endpapers. And I just think it's an incredibly beautiful copy of Catabasis. But this story, which I know Mal and I have talked about, but it's like what if two grad students, sort of rival friends, rival grad students, go to hell to try to find their advisor who has... died via magic ritual gone wrong, been sent to hell. So they go to hell to try to get him back because they need a letter of recommendation, essentially. That's kind of the premise. It's a little bit more complicated than that. Here's a couple of things I will say. One, it's a really cool exploration of different mythological and cultural interpretations of what the underworld is. So the underworld that they go to is basically occupied by, you know, spirits and figures and scenarios and rivers and landmarks from all different sort of cultural cultures and ideas of the underworld. So that's a really, really cool mashup kind of idea. And then there's a section, if you talk to anyone who's read Catabasis, there's a section, I don't know, two-thirds of the way through where Arf Kuang, who was in academia, And this takes place Magical Oxford and then hell underneath Magical Oxford. But basically talks about clearly very personally what it means to be like a woman in academia or a woman in any male driven field and sort of tells her story of her relationship with her advisor. And it is like a jaw. dropping, mic dropping, incredible section inside of this. You're reading this book and you're like, this is like a pretty cool, fun fantasy book. And then you get to that section and you just, every person I know who's read that section is like, dear God, oh my God. So it just takes it to another level. She has a new book out this year called Taipei Story, which is not sci-fi fantasy, I believe. I haven't read it yet, but I absolutely will because if she wrote it, I will read it. So that is Arf Kuang. Speaker 2 (26:04) Leigh Bardugo, I already mentioned. Leigh Bardugo, Deadbeat, I mentioned in my best books of the year section. But I just want to say Leigh Bardugo definitely