Every Speculative Fiction Book I Read This Year Featuring Queer Women, A List - 2025

[aquila1nz]

I read 24 books that meet the criteria in 2025, the same as last year. I'm reading less speculative fiction and some more mysteries, romances and historical fiction, and I struggled with reading print books towards the end of the year. And I'm pleased to get this posted just before January is over.



The Lotus Empire by Tasha Suri 🪷🔥
The final book of the trilogy has plenty of action, and despite all the sacrifice foreshadowing it has an ending for Malini and Priya that I can live with.

The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed 👨🏼‍🎤🐋 Lesbian cyberpunk from 1996 that has really stood the test of time.

Model Home by Rivers Solomon 🏘‍👨‍👩‍👧‍👧 Gothic horror in a gated community as a setting for racism and abuse. Nonbinary/intersex protagonist.

Time's Agent by Brenda Peynado ⌛️🥭 On an Earth full of entries to pocket universes Dominican archaeologist Raquel hopes to find one where her Tainos ancestors live on. When she is caught out of time in one she returns to find a war over, her daughter dead, her wife in hiding and corporate greed contaminating everything.

The Blood-Born Dragon by J.C. Rycroft 🎭🐉 Des accidentally hatches a dragon from an egg in a brigand's purse, and finds herself responsible for the future of the kingdom - and stuck interacting with her ex.

The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky ⭕️🧌 A complex story of alternate worlds alongside ours. Two young cryptid hunters are separated early in the story when one goes through a portal.

The Shutouts by Gabrielle Korn 🚶‍♀️🚶 Near future clifi where various characters travel on foot to and from cult compounds.

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite 🚀👥 A murder mystery on a starship where theoretically nobody dies because their memory prints are preserved for reloading into cloned bodies.

The Water Outlaws by S. L. Huang 🥷🗡Political exiles join queer bandits and pit themselves against the empire.

Countess by Suzan Palumbo 👩‍✈️⛓️ A captain rising in the ranks of the empire that colonised her people finds herself imprisoned.

Grievers by adrienne maree brown 😷🏚 Dune lives in a Detroit that has been quarantined due to a mysterious epidemic.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell 🐙 A monster falls in love with her nemesis' daughter.

In Universes by Emet North ⚛️♟ A physicist imagines meeting a sculptor across different timelines.

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh 🐦‍🔥🏫 An experienced teacher of demonology faces a threat to her school that may come from within.

Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa 🌊🏙People live in partially submerged towers on the coast of Nigeria

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older 🟠🚝 Another mystery to be solved by Pleiti and Mossa at a university floating on the platforms of Jupiter

This Princess Kills Monsters 👸👾 by Ry Herman A whacky retelling of the twelve huntsmen (some of whom are women in disguise).

The Witch Roads and The Nameless Land duology by Kate Elliott 🧙‍♀️🛤 A bisexual courier is pulled into a prince's train to protect her nephew, in a land where ancient powers are bound in ruins along the sheltering witch roads.

Vengeance by Emma Newman 🏴‍☠️🧛‍♀️ A young woman raised on a pirate ship is captured and taken back to meet her real mother in France.

Mirrored Heavens by Rebecca Roanhorse 🪞🧜‍♀️ The final volume ends the stories of Crow god, Teek queen and Sun priest.

What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher 🪸👷‍♂️ Alex Easton explores a haunted mine in Western Virginia.

The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan 🚩🐉 Wheel of Time. Is this the first book of the series that mentions f/f relationships? Maybe, depends how you read it.

The Sovereign by C. L. Clark 👑🌲 Queen and ambassador are forced to face the role of sacrifice in abandoned magics.

I like that my reading year was bookended by the final books of two trilogies from the sapphic trifecta of 2021. Both very much stuck the landing.

Thank you to LibraryThing for the easy covers screengrab.

You can see all the books I read in 2025; gay, straight and nonapplicable at Aquila's LibraryThing 2025

2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019


I'll follow up with a favourite books of the year post.