I’ve recently been craving all things fantasy, especially after reading Exquisite Captive by Heather Demetrios (SO GOOD). After consulting my shelves and my Kindle it turns out that I have a hell of a lot of YA fantasies waiting to be read and I need some advice; these are the ones I most want to read, which should I pick first?
Snow Like Ashes, Sara
Raasch
Game
of Thrones meets
Graceling in this striking fantasy
tale of dark magic, dangerous politics, and discovering your true self. Sara Raasch’s
fantasy debut is a lightning-fast story of loyalty, love and controlling one’s
destiny.
Sisteen years ago the Kingdom
of Winter was conquered and its citizens enslaved, leaving them without magic
or a monarch. The Winterarians’ only hope for freedom is the eight survivors
who managed to escape, and who have been searching for the opportunity to steal
back Winter’s magic and rebuild their kingdom ever since.
Orphaned as an infant during
Winter’s defeat, Meira has lived her whole life as a refugee. Training to be a
warrior – and desperately in love with her best friend, Winter’s future king –
she would do anything to help Winter rise to power again. So when scouts
discover the location of half of the ancient locket that can restore their
magic, Meira decides to go after it herself – only to find herself thrust into
a world of evil magic and dangerous politics, and to realise her destiny is
not, never has been, her own.
Sabriel
is sent as a child across the Wall to the safety of the school in Ancelstierre.
Away from magic; away from the Dead.
After receiving
a cryptic message from her father, 18-year-old Sabriel leaves her ordinary
school and returns across the Wall into the Old Kingdom.
Fraught
with peril and deadly trickery, her journey takes her to a world filled with
parasitical spirits, Mordicants, and Shadow Hands – for her father is none other
than The Abhorsen. His task is to lay the disturbed Dead back to rest. This obliges
him – and now Sabriel, who has taken on her father’s role and duties – to slip
over the border in to the icy river of Death, sometimes battling the evil
forces that lurk there, waiting for an opportunity to escape into the realm of
the living.
Desperate
to find her father, and grimly determined to help save the Old Kingdom from
destruction by the horrible forces of the evil undead, Sabriel endures almost
impossible challenges whilst discovering her own supernatural abilities – and her
destiny.
Shadowplay, Laura
Lam
The circus lies behind Micah
Grey in dust and ashes.
He and the white clown, Drystan,
take refuge with the once-great musician, Jasper Maske. When Maske agrees to
teach them his trade, his embittered rival challenges them to a duel which could
decide all of their fates. People also hunt both Micah and the person he was
before the circus – the runaway daughter of a noble family. And Micah discovers
there is magic and power in the world, far beyond card tricks and illusions he’s
perfecting...
A tale of phantom wings, a
clockwork hand, and the delicate unfurling of new love, Shadowplay continues Micah Grey’s extraordinary journey.
Evie’s
shattered ribs have been a secret for the last four years. Now she has found
the strength to tell her adoptive parents, and the physical traces of her past
are fixed – the only remaining signs a scar and a fragment of bone taken home
from the hospital, which her uncle Ben helps her carve into a dragon as a sign
of her strength.
Soon this
ivory talisman begins to come to life at night, offering wisdom and encouragement
in roaming dreams of smoke and moonlight that come to feel ever more real.
As Evie
grows stronger there remains one problem that her new parents’ can’t fix for
her: a revenge that must be taken. And it seems that the Dragon is the one to
take it.
Touch of Power, Maria
V Snyder
They destroyed her world, but
she’s their only hope.
Avry’s power to heal the sick
should earn her respect in the plague-torn land of Kazan. Instead she is
feared. Her kind are blamed for the horrifying disease that has taken hold of
the nation. When Avry uses her forbidden magic to save a dying child, she faces
the guillotine. Until a dark, mysterious man rescues her from her prison cell.
His people need Avry’s magic to
save their dying prince. The very prince who first unleashed the plague on
Kazan. Saving the prince is certain to kill Avry – yet she already faces a
violent death. Now she must choose – use her healing touch to show the ultimate mercy or die a martyr to
a lost cause?
A fragile
peace has been achieved in the realm of the Goredd, and dragons and humans live
together in harmony.
But the
truce is shattered when a royal prince is brutally murdered – could dragons be
to blame?
Seraphina,
a talented court musician harbouring secrets of her own, is drawn into the
investigation and uncovers a darker plot, one that threatens the very existence
of the kingdom. And soon her own life is in terrible danger as she fights to
hide the secrets behind her amazing gift...
The Night Itself, Zoe
Marriott
When fifteen-year-old Mio
steals the katana – her grandfather’s priceless sword – she just wants to liven
up a fancy dress costume. But the katana is more than a dusty heirloom, and her
actions unleash and ancient evil onto the streets of London. Mio is soon
stalked by the terrors of mythical Japan and it is only the appearance of a
mysteriously familiar warrior boy that saves her life. Mio must learn to
control the katana’s legendary powers fast or she risks losing not only her
life...but the love of a lifetime.
The Fire
Sermon, Francesca Haig
When Zach
and I were born our parents must have counted and recounted: limbs, fingers,
toes. We were perfect. They would have been disbelieving: nobody dodged the
split between Alpha and Omega.
Nobody.
Cass and
Zach were born a perfect pair: no missing limbs, no Omega mutation- but Cass
has a secret...
In her
dreams she has seen the day they will be separated. She has felt the searing
heat of the Omega brand as it burned into her forehead, marking her fate for
all to see.
For years
Cass hides her power of foresight from her family and brother as the eyes of
the community bear down upon them: waiting for the day the Omega mutation appears.
When Zach
discovers Cass’s secret he will stop at nothing to expose her and take his
rightful place as Alpha. As her twin rises through the ranks of power, Cass
must be locked away where no harm can befall her in order to keep him safe...
The power
to change the world is in their hands: one will have to defeat the other is
their vision of the future is to come to pass...
But Omega
and Alpha twins share more than the moment of their births, if one twin dies,
so does the other...
Dreams of Gods and Monsters, Laini
Taylor
It began with
DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE
It continued with
It continued with
DAYS OF BLOOD AND STARLIGHT
It ends with
DREAMS OF GODS AND MONSTERS
Common enemy, common cause.
When Jael’s brutal seraph army
trespasses intot eh human world, the unthinkable becomes essential, and Karou and
Akiva must ally their enemy armies against the threat. It is a twisted version
of their long-ago dream, and they begin to hope that it may forge a way forward
for their people.
And perhaps, for themselves.
But there are bigger threats
than Jael in the offing. A vicious queen in hunting Akiva and, in the skies of
Eretz...something is happening. Massive stains are spreading like bruises from
horizon to horizon; the great winged stormhunters are gathering as if summoned,
ceaselessly circling, and a deep sense of wrong pervades the world.
What power can bruise the sky?
From the streets of Rome to the
caves of the Kirin and beyond, humans, chimera, and seraphim will fight,
strive, love and die in an epic theatre that transcends good and evil, right
and wrong, friend and enemy.
At the very barriers of space
and time, what do gods and monsters dream of? And does anything else matter?
HELP! They all sound so amazing
– what do I read next?
Sophie