Next SFF Author: Rick Yancey

Previous SFF Author: John Wyndham

Series: Young Adult

Fantasy Literature for Young Adults (over the age of 12).

Bones of Faerie: Faults and sparks of brilliance

Bones of Faerie by Janni Lee Simner

The human world has been rendered almost unlivable, victim of the wild magic unleashed by the faeries in their war with the humans twenty years earlier. Liza, a teenage girl, tries to survive in a small community in the Midwestern United States that has been savaged by the remnants of the war. The corn fights back against the humans harvesting it, and the blackberry vines seek flesh. Everyone who survived the war knows that magic is dangerous and cannot be tolerated, so when Liza’s sister is born with the clear hair that marks her as magically tainted,

The Poison Eaters and Other Stories: Dark, gorgeous, emotional

The Poison Eaters and Other Stories by Holly Black

The first collection of short stories by author Holly Black, The Poison Eaters and Other Stories is dark, gorgeous, and emotionally compelling. Ranging from longer stories to short little character sketches, Black has created a handful of settings and characters that will live on in memory long after you close this slim volume. Holly Black manages to evoke an incredibly detailed world with a spare prose that conveys the static crackle of a remote video feed,

The Eyes of a King: Would you like some gloom with that?

The Eyes of a King by Catherine Banner

“All those years, I thought I was unhappy. I don’t think anymore that I was,” Leo reflects early in The Eyes of a King, looking back on his teenage self.

Now, after 250 pages of military dictatorship, abusive teachers, missing parents, Leo being sick, Leo’s little brother being sick, kids getting drafted into the army, and heavy-handed foreshadowing of a tragic event that happens around the 225-page mark, and Leo brooding about all of these things? If this is Leo North when he’s happy,

Numbers: Promising start, but disappointing in the end

Numbers by Rachel Ward

Numbers is a book that’s hard to categorize. It starts out as urban fantasy, then becomes more of an adventure novel, then seems to be a “teaching life lessons” story toward the end.

The heroine, Jem, has a supernatural “gift” that has caused her no end of grief. She sees numbers when she looks at people. As a little girl, she didn’t know what the numbers meant — not until her mother’s number turned out to be the day she overdosed on drugs.

Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side: Brain candy for teen girls

Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side by Beth Fantaskey

Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side is a fun piece of brain candy for teen girls. Imagine the “girl finds out she’s a long-lost princess” fantasy combined with the “girl finds out she’s the destined true love of a hot vampire guy” fantasy, and you’ve pretty much got the gist. I enjoyed the novel while reading it, but I think I’d have liked it better when I was in the target audience, and there were some aspects that really troubled me.

The Seven Rays: In search of a target audience

The Seven Rays by Jessica Bendinger

Beth Ray is beginning to realize she’s not just your average teenage girl. She’s seeing strange visions, and then there are the letters: shiny gold envelopes containing hints of a great destiny. Her mother tries to keep them from her, but the envelopes manage to find Beth wherever she goes.

And then a big hairy bloke shows up on a flying motorbike and takes her to a wizard school in Scotland… wait, wrong book.

What happens to Beth, instead, is that she undergoes laser eye surgery to try to correct her sight,

The King of Attolia: Recommended with a caveat

The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner

Gen is now The King of Attolia, married to the woman who he has loved since childhood, who also ordered his hand cut off when he was caught snooping around the castle. At the end of the last book, The Queen of Attolia, he offered to marry the Queen to seal a peace treaty between her country and his native Eddis, keeping secret from almost everyone that he has been in love with her since his youth.

Ice: Cassie is not one of those passive YA heroines

Ice by Sarah Beth Durst

Cassie doesn’t believe in fairy tales. Sure, Gram used to tell her that bedtime story about how Cassie’s mother was stolen away by the North Wind and imprisoned by trolls. But Cassie, who lives with her scientist father at a research station in the Arctic, has every intention of following in Dad’s logical, analytical footsteps. She has no time for fantasy. And besides, as she grew older, she realized that “stolen by the North Wind” was just a euphemism for “died.”

Or was it?

On her eighteenth birthday,

Storm Thief: Not for the full of stomach

Storm Thief by Chris Wooding

From the get go, Storm Thief has you on the edge of your seat. Chris Wooding once again creates a very vivid and realistic world full of danger and suspense, and the characters to go along with it. We meet stone-hearted villains, a frightened and bewildered half-machine-half-man creation, a day-dreaming thief, and many more. This is not for the faint of heart, or the full of stomach.

Orokos is an isolated city on an island in the middle of a vast ocean.

Persistence of Memory: Overly-byzantine supernatural bicker-fest

Persistence of Memory by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

I can’t deny that Persistence of Memory has an interesting premise. The protagonist, Erin, is a teenage girl who has been institutionalized most of her life due to multiple personalities and hallucinations. As the novel begins, Erin’s alternate personality, Shevaun, has been suppressed by drugs for about a year, and Erin is taking the first steps toward going to a regular high school and having a “normal” life. Right at this inopportune time, Shevaun reasserts herself and once again threatens to destroy Erin’s sanity,

Next SFF Author: Rick Yancey

Previous SFF Author: John Wyndham

We have reviewed 8497 fantasy, science fiction, and horror books, audiobooks, magazines, comics, and films.

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Recent Discussion:

David C Walton on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 5, 2025
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
Marion Deeds on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 5, 2025
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
Bill Capossere on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 3, 2025
We’re in total agreement David!
David C Walton on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 3, 2025
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Marion Deeds on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 3, 2025
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.