This past year, I waded into the ocean of the young adult fantasy genre—many
I have found predictable, stereotypical, and annoying. Alina Starkov, the
heroine of Shadow and Bone, stepped off the page for me with the words,
“I’m not Grisha. I’m a mapmaker. I’m not even a very good mapmaker,” and she never
disappointed me afterward.
This book achieves an amazing balance
of teen coming of age/romance and good vs evil/high-stakes epic fantasy. The various
settings that evoke Imperial Russia are rich and imaginative.
The only moments
I was taken out of the story were to admire Bardugo’s craft. Alina’s “hero
journey” seemed natural, relatable, and familiar—like I’d re-opened
a favorite folktale. I loved this book!
See the Grishaverse come to life on screen with Shadow and Bone, now a Netflix series.
Enter the Grishaverse with Book One of the Shadow and Bone Trilogy by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom.
Soldier. Summoner. Saint. Orphaned and expendable, Alina Starkov is a soldier who knows she may not survive her first trek across the Shadow Fold—a swath of unnatural darkness crawling with monsters. But when her regiment is attacked, Alina unleashes dormant magic not even she knew she possessed.
Now Alina will enter a lavish world of royalty and intrigue…
The premise of The Bridge, a sci-fi/dystopian young
adult novel, grabbed my attention off the hop.
The protagonist, Nik Stais,
one of Tornmoor Academy’s top graduates, is shocked when Internal
Security and Intelligence Services selects his peers as recruits but leaves him
behind. Questioning his privileged Cityside upbringing, Nik is soon forced to venture
over a bridge into the hostile Southside, where he finds answers—and also warring
factions bent on destroying the City and each other.
Higgins’ complex world-building
reminded me of Lois Lowry’s The Giver, John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids,
and Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games. With its echoes of real-life past and
current conflicts/social inequality, The Bridge was a thought-provoking and
highly worthwhile read.
The City is divided. The bridges gated. In Southside, the hostiles live in squalor and desperation, waiting for a chance to overrun the residents of Cityside.
Nik is still in high school but is destined for a great career with the Internal Security and Intelligence Services, the brains behind the war. But when ISIS comes recruiting, everyone is shocked when he isn't chosen. There must be an explanation, but no one will talk about it. Then the school is bombed and the hostiles take the bridges. Buildings are burning, kids are dead, and the hostiles have kidnapped Sol. Now ISIS…
Legendborn totally tricked me. I
thought I had it figured out, so I didn’t foresee the plot twists, of which
there were plenty.
Its protagonist, Briana Matthews, is a fascinating,
multi-layered character—strong-willed, resilient, impulsive, and—underneath it
all—deeply hurt and lost. She is devastated by the recent death of her mother.
She feels out of place at UNC-Chapel Hill, where she reflects, “My dorm is an
antebellum building. Not built for people that looked like me, but
definitely built by them.”
By intertwining Arthurian legend and West
African rootcraft with acute traumatic grief and systemic racism, Deonn smashes
epic fantasy tropes. I’ve never read anything like Legendborn.
An Instant New York Times Bestseller! Winner of the Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe for New Talent Author Award
Filled with mystery and an intriguingly rich magic system, Tracy Deonn’s YA contemporary fantasy reinvents the King Arthur legend and “braids together Southern folk traditions and Black Girl Magic into a searing modern tale of grief, power, and self-discovery” (Dhonielle Clayton, New York Times bestselling author of The Belles).
After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill…
Sixteen-year-old Gabrielle March accompanies her
father, the powerful warlord Simon March, to Andwarf. Before Gabrielle can be
installed as a vestal at the Temple of the Goddess, Simon is murdered.
Finding
herself alone in a hostile, violent city, she seeks the help of a childhood
friend, now a handsome young blacksmith, to help her find her older brother. When Damon is arrested and sentenced to hang, Gabrielle discovers she is indeed
her father’s daughter—in more ways than she ever dreamed possible.
Gabrielle and the Rebels, Book 1 in the Winds of Change series,
takes the reader on a journey into an imaginary seventeenth-century world where
technology is magic and enemies are everywhere.
