Hello everyone, I am hoping for some guidance on recent speculative fiction or adult fantasy books that might be useful comps for querying my own book. I've been reading quite a lot of literary fiction and non-fiction, and while these are excellent for technique, craft, and overall creativity, they are awful for relevant marketable titles in my chosen genre.
While I am working on my revisions, I was hoping to use the remaining summer to catch up on my reading in the adult fantasy genre, with an eye toward similar titles. Any guidance on any aspect of the below would be helpful.
One comp I have is Jade City by Fonda Lee, but that's secondary as it's pretty old now. Stylistically, I admire and attempt to be like China Mieville in his New Crebulon books, but that's ancient history, and at this point, it might as well be the Epic of Gilgamesh.
My book is set in an early-20th-century setting with trains, electricity, and guns. It has a female POC main character, sapphic romance, and a small cast focused on a trade of dreams via blood (like brain dancing in Cyberpunk but with a vial of narcotic blood). There's a major assassination, betrayal, and an exploration of how to survive in a system that knows only profit and if it's possible to be a good person when evil is incentivized (and whether love really does conquer all) – think the Wire but with blood magic trade.
Any help from the past five years would be helpful. I've read quite a lot of pre-pandemic fantasy, but that's all considered 'out of date' by the ever changing fantasy genre.
by monetgourmand