Surprising Dungeons & Dragons Novel to Be Released This Year

A surprising Dungeons & Dragons novel is coming out this summer. Penguin Random House will publish Dungeons & Dragons: Spelljammer: Memory’s Wake, a new novel by Django Wexler. The listing for the new full-length novel says that the book will follow Axla, a seemingly new character, as she embarks on a piratical adventure aboard a Spelljammer ship. The new novel will be released this July. Interestingly, the listings were put up at the same time as The Fallbacks: Bound for Ruin, another D&D novel published by Penguin Random House due for release in March. However, Penguin Random House has yet to send out any press releases or promotional material for the book. 

Wexler is best known for writing The Shadow Campaigns, a series of flintlock fantasy novels inspired by the Napoleonic Wars. Wexler also wrote a pair of Magic: The Gathering novels, so he does have some experience working on licensed IP and more specifically Wizards of the Coast IPs. 

The new novel is notable for several different reasons. First and foremost, this marks the first Spelljammer novel in over 30 years. This also continues a surprising resurgence for “official” Dungeons & Dragons novels. While TSR and later Wizards of the Coast used to publish numerous D&D novels, the line has almost completely died off in recent years save for the occasional Drizzt novel. Penguin Random House seems to be giving D&D novels another chance though, with the publication of several Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves tie-in novels, the previously mentioned Fallbacks novel (which seems to be the beginning of a book series) and now a new Spelljammer book. Penguin Random House has also published several Critical Role tie-in novels, so it appears the publisher senses that there’s a market for TTRPG tie-ins. 

Spelljammer: Memory’s Wake will be released in July 2024. Pre-orders for the book can be found on Amazon.