YA Fantasy TBR Pile

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, Garth Nix

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.

The Bone Dragon, Alexia Casale

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?

Seraphina, Rachel Hartman

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

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