10 best YA fantasy books, ranked
Climate change, power-crazed billionaires, and the rise of potentially malevolent AI—there are a lot of things for today’s youth to worry about when it comes to tomorrow. Rather than looking into the ugly face of reality 100% of the time, I think there are times when it’s best to limit one’s exposure to the waking world and seek refuge in the pages of worlds beyond ours. Dive into some magical problems for a change, you know? How do I fly this dragon? How do I make this talking ferret love me? How do I honor the legacy of my dead sky pirate dad? These 10 best YA fantasy books will answer all those questions and more.
10. The Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell
Don’t let this book cover fool you—The Edge Chronicles is one of the traumatizing series on this list. Penned by Paul Stewart and illustrated by Chris Riddell, this series takes place on a continent-sized lip of rock jutting out over an infinite abyss. The problems that the denizens of the edge face are dire. Flesh-eating trees. Dementia-inducing forests. Abyss-dwelling demons. A civilization of man-eating bipedal birds that want to conquer the world. How are the youth of this world supposed to cope? By becoming sky pirates, monster slayers, and plucky scientists whose discoveries will lay the secrets of mysterious Edge bare for all to see, that’s how.
9. Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor revolves around 12-year-old Sunny Nwazue. Though born in New York City, the young girl lives in Nigeria, where she is often bullied by her peers due to her albinism. After making friends with a group of girls her age, Sunny finds herself a member of a secret community that can help foster her nascent magical abilities. She forms a coven with her friends dedicated to fighting for good, and the group decides to stick it to the forces of evil by hunting a mysterious magician who has been stealing children and using them for dark rituals. Sunny soon learns that, in the new magical world that she inhabits, the things she once saw as her defects have become her greatest strengths.
8. Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
In a world where dragons and humans have brokered an uneasy peace, the suspiciously dragon-esque murder of a human noble threatens to topple the status quo. Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina centers around a titular young protagonist hired to serve as a singer in the kingdom’s court. After the war between dragons and humans ended, dragons have since served as ambassadors and scholars, guiding human civilization with their powerful intellects. Will young Seraphina solve the murder and cool off the rising fire of animosity, or will the highly flammable relationship between humans and dragons go up in smoke?
7. The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna
Inspired by West African folklore, Namina Forna’s The Gilded Ones is the story of 16-year-old Deka, who is preparing for a bloodletting ceremony after which she will become a full-fledged member of her community. If her blood runs red, all is well. If her blood is gold, well, that’s not something she wants to think about that. After getting the opposite result than the one she hoped for, Deka chooses exile over imprisonment and accompanies a mysterious woman who will help cultivate the magical abilities for which gold-blooded girls are feared. Now,, all she has to do is join a squadron of young women who use their powers to fight lethal banshee-like spirits in the Emperor’s name. When torture and death are the only alternative Deka’s is an easy decision to make.
6. An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
Sabaa Tahir’s An Ember in the Ashes takes place in a world so brutal it makes The Hunger Games look like Hershey Park. The young Leia was born into a life of servitude to The Empire, a continent-spanning political juggernaut inspired by the dark decadence of Ancient Rome. In this world, you don’t pledge your life to the Empire because your life was never yours to begin with. While Leia and her family have managed to get by whilst lying low in the imperial backstreets, everything changes when her brother is falsely imprisoned for treason. To free her brother, Leia agrees to join a secret rebellion and infiltrate the kingdom’s most prestigious (and ruthless) military academy. Once there, she meets a soldier equally unsympathetic to the empire’s cause, and the pair serve as the flint and tinder for a rebellious fire that causes a kingdom to burn.
5. Flame in the Mist by Renée Adhieh
Renée Ahdieh’s Flame in the Mist is the story of Mariko, the daughter of a rich samurai whose skills in alchemy are overshadowed by her marital eligibility. Doomed to live out her days as a bride in the imperial court, Mariko’s life changes when her convoy is attacked by a shadowy clan. She is the only one who escapes alive. To survive in a male-dominated world, Mariko resorts to a tactic adopted by French saints and Shakespeare heroines alike: she dresses as a man. Now disguised, she hunts down the members of the clan that nearly took her life, which, as it turns out, is a way more exciting way to spend your time than babysitting an emperor.
4. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Before it became a charming Tim Burton film, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children was an equally whimsical novel revolving around the titular Miss Peregrine and her boarding house for wayward magical kids. Penned by Ransom Riggs, Peculiar Children is the dark foil of fantasy books like T.J. Klune’s A House in the Cerulean Sea. After discovering his grandfather mauled by a mysterious monster, the young Jacob Portman is sent away to his pop-pop’s ancestral home to confront his trauma. While the quack therapist who recommended Jacob’s relocation should totally be fired, I suppose Jacob owes it to the guy—discovering that his grandfather’s old house is a haven for pyrokinetic little girls and invisible boys who believe him when he tells them he’s seen monsters is exactly what this troubled youngster needed.
3. Beasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi
Tochi Onyebuchi’s Beasts Made of Night is the story of a town you don’t want to visit with a guilty conscience. In the walled city of Kos, sorcerers use forbidden magic to pull sins from the bodies of the sinful and turn them into hellish sin-beasts to do their evil bidding! The only ones who can stand against these dark forces are sin-eaters, young warriors who spend their lives killing sin-beasts. 17-year-old Taj is a sin-eater who got the short end of the stick: he’s been tasked with clearing the sins of a member of the royal family. In his quest to cleanse the realm from darkness, he’s swept up in a political conspiracy far more morally ambiguous than the monsters he is forced to purify.
2. The Book of Dust by Philip Pullman
Building off the multiverse-hopping, sentient-polar-bear-befriending masterpiece that was His Dark Materials, author Philip Pullman revisits the story’s God-killing tween protagonist to tell the tale of her life as a little one! Baby Lyra Belacqua is wanted by an evil world-dominating church because she’s prophesied to topple Heaven. Her only hope of survival lies with an 11-year-old boy and his trusty canoe. On the run (paddle?) during a flood of Biblical proportions, young Michael Polstead spends the trilogy’s first book, La Belle Sauvage, sailing the titular boat to safe harbor, all while keeping its precious baby cargo alive. In the second book of the series, the novel timeskips to Lyra’s early 20s, where she goes on a spirit quest to heal her fractured relationship with a pine martin that serves as the living embodiment of her soul (long story, but totally worth the read).
1. Eragon by Christopher Paolini
When it comes to timeless fantasy stories for the youth, Christopher Paolini quite literally wrote the book. Eragon is the first of the Inheritance Cycle and tells a sweeping story with all the high-fantasy fixings. Magic swords. Ancient prophecies. Wizard guides. Eragon feels like something straight out of an Arthurian legend. When the titular young farm boy protagonist finds a curiously sized egg in the woods, imagine his surprise when it hatches into a fire-breathing dragon. Dragons in this realm are somewhat of a controlled substance, with the wicked King Galbatorix being the only person in the empire with the privilege to ride them. After discovering that a young boy possesses both a dragon AND a sword of destiny given to him by a wise old storyteller, the king fears that his royal days are numbered and attempts to snuff out Eragon’s light for good.
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