YA? You mean, for teenagers? How could anything written for teens possibly be worthy of any artistic merit? Kids these days, expecting literary brilliance in form of an age appropriate novel! Back in my day, the only thing we expected from a book was for someone to smack us upside the head with one for mouthing off. You know what? I’ll just crack open one of these “10 Best YA Fantasy Books” right now and see what all the fuss is about… oh… OH. OOOOOHHH. I’M WEEPING. Such beautiful prose! Such mature themes articulated in such simple ways! These novels truly are some of the best that the 21st century has to offer! I HAVE SEEN THE LITERARY LIGHT.
Eragon
On the surface, Eragon appears like your average “chosen one” narrative about a boy, his dragon, an evil king, and a cool sword. But beneath the surface, Christopher Paolini’s novel is… exactly that kind of story – and that’s what makes it so good. Eragon feels like a timeless classic, a YA reimagining of The Lord of The Rings. It’s the story a young man’s quest to defeat an evil tyrant with the help of his dragon bestie with whom he shares a telepathic connection – and that’s just plain awesome. Reading Eragon is like eating a perfectly cooked and seasoned steak. The flavor might not take you by surprise, but it’s exactly what you wanted. Comforting, rich, and satisfying down to the last literary bite.
Children of Blood and Bone
Set in a fantastical reimagining of West Africa, Children of Blood and Bone is the story of the magical divîners and the mundane kosidán – who are jealous of the divîners’ abilities. In order to subjugate the divîners, the kosidán King Saran concocted a way to shut off the their connection to magic, allowing him to tax, opress and even purge them whenever he saw fit. Eleven years later, two young divîner children bump into a runaway kosidán princess who has stolen an artifact with the power to return lost magic, and the trio embark on an Avatar the Last Airbender style quest to rebalance the world. Unlucky for them, a Prince Zuko-esque character attempts to thwart them at every turn: the son of King Saran, Prince Inan. If you wondered what would happen if Azula and not Zuko betrayed Fire Lord Ozai to join Team Avatar, this is the book you need.
An Ember In The Ashes
Despite being marketed as a book for teens, An Ember In The Ashes deals with some heavy themes. The stage is set in the Martial Empire – basically the Roman Empire but worse. The rich stay rich while commoners are oppressed, and young Laia is one of them. After her brother is arrested for a crime he didn’t commit, Laia is given one of the most daunting tasks a teenager can face: she’s gotta go to school. Specifically, the Empire’s most prestigious military academy, so she can infiltrate the halls of power and shake down the movers and shakers for her brother’s whereabouts. After a chance encounter with the school’s best student who harbors anti-imperial thoughts of his own, Laia her new ally Elias become the flint and tinder that will make an empire burn. Nero can fiddle all he wants.
The Edge Chronicles
The Edge Chronicles is technically marketed as a story for children, but this book series is capable of traumatizing kids well into their teenage years. Set on a continent-sized precipice that juts out over oblivion, Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell’s novels follow the cast of characters who call The Edge home. Sky pirates, academics who live on floating rocks, man-eating bird women, librarian knights, talking bears, evil spirits from beyond the stars, The Edge takes all kinds, the most horrible of which are made even more so by Chris Riddell’s childhood trauma inducing illustrations. I’m STILL trying to scrub my mind free of the image of the knight who got caught in a dementia inducing forest – my therapist and I have our work cut out for us.
Six of Crows
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo is a story about a favorite teenage pastime: drugs. Specifically, stealing them! In the dingy city of Ketterdam, Kaz Brekker makes his living as a sticky fingered thief – keeping his head low and his bank account high. After a chance encounter with a similar gaggle of ne’er-do-wells, Kaz is offered the job of a lifetime: break into a fortress that makes Fort Knox look like a bouncy castle in order to spring a drug producing scientist who makes Albert Hoffman look like Mr. Rogers. With the help of a heist crew with more unresolved sexual tension than a Christian youth group, Kaz and frenemies are sure to pull off the score of the century, or die (horribly) trying.
The Mortal Instruments
Beginning with City of Bones, Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments is a story that starts with a problem that teenagers caused. But not your average teens, little high school aged Ted Bundys! After witnessing a gruesome murder carried out by tattooed youths at an NYC nightclub, Clary Fray understandably freaks out. Not because she witnessed three sophomores catch a body, but because that body then disappeared into thin air. What Clary doesn’t realize is that she’s just witnessed a hit carried out by The Shadowhunters, a group of lean, mean, demon hunting teens. Just in time, because demons have started sniffing after Clary herself – and she’s gotta figure out why before the hellmouth clamps down on her.
The Shades of Magic
The Shades of Magic series by V.E. Schwab takes place in a world color coded for your convenience! In this Victorian fantasy there exist four parallel versions of London – Red, White, Grey, and Black – each with its own (usually fraught) relationship to the arcane. Kell is an ambassador of the magically thriving Red London, who moonlights as a purveyor of contraband arcane goods from parallel worlds. After being relieved of a magic stone by a Grey London pickpocket, Kell and his robber are thrust together on a quest to save the multiverse from ending up like Black London, a place where magic has long since withered away. As the kids of today say, “Gee wilikers! that sounds like a real doozy!” At least, I think they do?
Twilight
Love it or love-to-hate it, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight deserves your respect. A pioneer of the paranormal romance genre, Meyer introduced an entire generation of teens to the whirlwind world of supernatural love, one stilted sentence at a time. This franchise left massive bite marks on the neck of pop culture, forever dividing the world into two factions – Team Edward and Team Jacob – as oppositional as the North and South Poles. Four novels and five movies later, Twilight is still culturally relevant. We’ve all seen the vampire baseball game edits on TikTok set to “Supermassive Black Hole,” don’t pretend you haven’t. At best, it’s a wild pulp romance ride. At worst, it’s still wildly entertaining.
The Bartimaeus Sequence
Jonathan Stroud’s The Bartimaeus Sequence is as painfully underrated as pumpernickel bagels (multigrain can’t compete). Set in a world where demons are literally a necessary evil, the political elite have been summoning spirits in order to influence history for as long has history’s been a thing (which, by definition, is a long time). After twelve year old Nathaniel steals a magical artifact from government magician Simon Lovelace, he uses it to summon a wise crackin’ spirit named Bartimaeus for his servant. Unsurprisingly, this gets their relationship off to a rocky start, but the pair form an uneasy alliance in an effort to thwart Lovelace’s plan to take over the nation – with the help of a demon of his own.
Seraphina
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman is a book about an essential teenage activity: making friends. When you’re a human attempting to make friends with shapeshifting dragons whose intelligence defies your comprehension, that’s easier said than done. In the kingdom of Goredd, humans and dragons have forged and uneasy peace based around the sharing of academic ideas, but that peace that is threatened when a royal is murdered in a very dragon-esque way. Who could possibly pass the charisma check of smoothing over simmering political tensions between human and dragon kind? Why, teenage bard-in-training Seraphina Dombegh, of course! Recently hired to serve as a court musician! While aiding in the investigation, Seraphina will have to be careful about striking any wrong notes – lest human/dragon relations explode into a chaotic crescendo.
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