Can't-Wait Wednesday: The Strength of the Few by James Islington & Beasts of the Sea by Iida Turpeinen

    

 Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released! 

The Strength of the Few (Hierarchy #2) by James Islington
Publication: November 11th, 2025
S&S/Saga Press
Hardcover. 736 pages.
Pre-order: Bookshop.org | Amazon

From Goodreads:
"This highly anticipated follow-up to The Will of the Many—one of 2023’s most lauded and bestselling fantasy novels—follows Vis as he grapples with a dangerous secret that could change the course of history across alternate dimensions.

OMNE TRIUM PERFECTUM.

The Hierarchy still call me Vis Telimus. Still hail me as Catenicus. They still, as one, believe they know who I am.

But with all that has happened—with what I fear is coming—I am not sure it matters anymore.

I am no longer one. I won the Iudicium, and lost everything—and now, impossibly, the ancient device beyond the Labyrinth has replicated me across three separate worlds. A different version of myself in each of Obiteum, Luceum, and Res. Three different bodies, three different lives. I have to hide; fight; play politics. I have to train; trust; lie. I have to kill; heal; prove myself again, and again, and again.

I am loved, and hated, and entirely alone.

Above all, though, I need to find answers before it’s too late. To understand the nature of what has happened to me, and why.

I need to find a way to stop the coming Cataclysm, because if all I have learned is true, I may be the only one who can."

This is probably my most highly anticipated release of 2025 and I am genuinely so excited to finally read this one! I can't recommend the first book, The Will of the Many, enough.

Beasts of the Sea by Iida Turpeinen
Publication: November 18h, 2025
Little, Brown and Company
Hardcover. 288 pages.
Pre-order: Bookshop.org | Amazon

From Goodreads:
"In the spirit of Richard Powers and Daniel Mason, a novel spanning three centuries and tied together by the tale of Steller’s sea cow—a long-extinct denizen of the northern oceans—at once intimate and sweeping about the tragic clash between man and nature.

In 1741, thirty-two-year-old naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller joins Captain Bering's Great Northern Expedition to scout out a sea route from Asia to America. Plagued with hardships, captain and crew never reach their goal, but they do make a unique discovery, a gentle giant that will be named for the young explorer who described Steller’s sea cow.

In 1859, the governor of the Russian territory of Alaska sends his men to seek the skeleton of the massive marine mammal rumored to have vanished a hundred years before, while his sister curates the settlement’s peculiar natural science collection. Two years later, a revered Helsinki professor hires a talented illustrator—a woman!—to make precise drawings of a set of bones sent from afar. The ill-fated beast will help introduce to a skeptical public the concept of human-caused extinction.

Finally, in 1952, the Museum of Zoology assigns its most talented restorer the task of refurbishing the antique skeleton, a testimony to the sea cow's fate that will fire the imaginations of future generations.

Beasts of the Sea is a breathtaking literary achievement and an adventure that crosses continents and centuries. Told through the stories of the men and women touched by the long-ago discovery of a curious and placid creature, it is a tale of grand human ambition, the quest for knowledge, and the urge to resurrect what humankind has, in its ignorance, destroyed."

I am absolutely loving the sound of everything about this! Although, I'm always a bit hesitant when I see something less than 300 pages but described as "spanning three centuries," but I have faith and can't wait to check this one out.