Two books worth your attention this week.
The Inn at the Foot of Mount Vengeance, by Chiara Bullen
Released July 7 from Del Rey, this cozy fantasy follows a research fellow assigned to document the exploits of adventurers scaling a mountain said to house a dragon, and the inn at its base where he ends up staying far longer than planned. The stakes are deliberately small: no war to win, no world to save, just a scholar, a strange mountain, and the people who live in its shadow. For readers who love epic fantasy but sometimes want a break from the seven-book commitment, this is proof that a fantasy world can be fully realized without needing to be under threat.
The next Crowns of Nyaxia installment, by Carissa Broadbent
Broadbent self-published her first novel, A Palace Fractured, in 2017, and self-published the first Crowns of Nyaxia book, The Serpent and the Wings of Night, in 2022, building a readership on BookTok before Bramble, an imprint of Tor under Macmillan, acquired the series and re-released it in December 2023 to bestseller lists. The newest entry in the six-book, three-duology series arrives in August. Whatever the sales figures end up being, the origin story matters more than the acquisition: this series found its audience with no publisher's backing at all, and the backing came after, not before.
One of these is about how small a fantasy story can be and still work. One is about how far self-published work can travel before anyone in traditional publishing takes notice. Both are worth sitting with.
Map's Edge Media pays attention to both kinds of stories, the ones that stay small on purpose and the ones that outgrow every assumption made about where they started.