10 best fantasy book series for young adults
Oh to be young! But also an adult! Is it not the best of both worlds? To burn bright with the fire of youth, yet to also be able to stay out past 9 PM and not have your parents call the cops! To have a stomach robust enough to spend the day eating nothing but gummy worms without vomiting, and to be able to buy those gummy worms with your own money! Being a young adult is like living in a fantasy world, and yet even young adults need to fly to fantasy worlds within that fantasy world sometimes. Hence this list: these are the 10 best fantasy book series for young adults.
The Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell
Haters will say that The Edge Chronicles are children’s fantasy, but those haters have obviously not opened one of these books and beheld the adult-level trauma not written, but illustrated upon its pages. Written by Paul Stewart and illustrated by Chris Riddell, this series takes place on a continent-sized cliff jutting out over oblivion known as The Edge. The Edge is home to all sorts of whimsical creatures and locales, and few of them are … nice. With flesh-eating demons and entire species of sentient flesh-eating bird women, this book is lousy with things trying to devour humans, and sometimes those horrifying devourings are illustrated in gory detail! The series centers around a lineage of adventurers, beginning with a boy who lives in woods haunted by ghosts and moving on to the son of a famous sky pirate (in case you needed another reason to read this, yes, this series has sky pirates).
Shadow and Bone (Grishaverse) by Leigh Bardugo
Written by Leigh Bardugo, the Grishaverse’s first series, which starts with Shadow and Bone, is set in a dark fantasy world inspired by tsarist Russia, where people use a combination of rudimentary technology and magic. In the nation of Ravka, the continent has been divided in two by an opaque, monster-infested barrier known as the Shadow Fold. After a young mapmaker named Alina Starkov discovers that she has the rare magical ability to summon light, she becomes a sought-after crew member on the many sand ships that make the perilous crossing through the dark anomaly. After being taken in by a mysterious figure called The Darkling and trained as a Grisha—one of the nation’s magical soldiers/sailors/adventurers—she discovers that there’s more to the Shadow Fold than meets (or doesn’t meet) the eye. (There are more books to devour in the Grishaverse, too!)
Legacy of Orïsha by Tomi Adeyemi
Tomi Adeyemi’s Legacy of Orïsha series is set in a fantasy kingdom inspired by West Africa. Beginning with Children of Blood and Bone, the novel tells the tale of the magical divîners, who have been oppressed and subjugated for their magical abilities by the king of the kosidán, a non-magical people who discovered a way to separate the divîners from their power. After a young divîner girl saves a runaway kosidán princess, the pair embark on a quest to return magic to the realm and free the divîners from their bondage; unless, of course, the kosidán King’s son can complete his Prince Zuko-style quest and hunt them down first.
Something Dark and Holy by Emily A. Duncan
A girl who can talk to the gods, a prince with a target on his back, and a boy who can turn into a monster walk into a bar … and then decide to assassinate a king. Emily A. Duncan’s Something Dark and Holy series is about two nations locked in a centuries-long war. After a young cleric discovers that she can chat with divinities, her monastery is attacked by the aforementioned sad boi prince, and she takes refuge with a boy from a traveling troupe of rebels who dabble in ancient blood magic. While the series begins with its characters on opposite ends of the good vs. evil gender spectrum, the gang slowly comes together to end the unjust war (and the king waging it) once and for all.
Shades of Magic by V.E. Schwab
The Shades of Magic series by V.E. Schwab is a dimension-hopping work of low fantasy about a smuggler mage that can pop between four alternate (and color-coded!) versions of pre-Victorian London. The adopted son of the royal family of the magically poppin’ off Red London, the magician Kell found his niche as a courier between worlds, delivering messages between his magic-friendly home and the magically dead and dying worlds of Grey, White, and Black London. Kell also has a side hustle of smuggling goods between the Londons (very naughty, very illegal). During one of his extra-legal outings, he bumps into a Grey London pickpocket who steals a device that allows for travel between worlds. While they start their journey as rivals, the pair must soon work together to stop a dark force threatening to destroy all the Londons—well, except for Black London, the place is already pretty dead.
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao
Neon Genesis Evangelion set in futuristic Medieval China? I’ll take twelve. Xiran Jay Zhao’s Iron Widow is a mecha fantasy reimagining the rise of the only female empress ever to rule China: Wu Zetian. Set in the high-tech fantasy nation of Huaxia, the land is under constant threat from invading Hundun, giant kaiju-esque alien beings from Chinese myth. To fight the monsters, humanity has fashioned giant robots from Hundun corpses called Chrysalises. Chrysalises are piloted by male and female teams, with the women lending their spiritual energy to assist male pilots (with usually fatal consequences) in battle. When Wu Zetian enlists in the military, she discovers that she is a rare type of pilot known as an Iron Widow; a woman who consumes the energy of her male copilot, not the other way around.
Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare
Cassandra Clare’s Infernal Devices series revolves around a group of magical demon hunters running around Victorian London. After the death of her aunt, Tessa Grey is sent across the pond to live with her brother but is instead captured by a pair of warlocks who force her to develop her previously undiscovered power of shapeshifting. After she’s rescued by a group of demon slayers called Shadowhunters, Tessa decides to use her newfound powers to stick it to her ex-captors and their kin. If you like your fantasy served with top hats, monocles, and beans on toast, then Infernal Devices is exactly the sort of stiff-upper-lip fantasy series an Anglophile like you needs. Combine that with steampunk monsters and a sticky love triangle between three lethally well-dressed twenty-somethings, and you’ve got low fantasy gold.
The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini
Beginning with Eragon, Christopher Paolini’s The Inheritance Cycle is as classic as fantasy stories get. The tale starts in the high fantasy kingdom inspired by medieval Europe, where a country bumpkin discovers a curiously sized egg while going for his daily ramble in the woods. After taking his ovular treasure home, he soon discovers that the egg belongs not to some undiscovered species of forest ostrich but a DRAGON. Pretty soon after, he’s handed magic swords by wizened old storytellers and told that he’s a child of destiny who must liberate the realm from the tyrannical rule of its king. When it comes to traditional fantasy tales about dragons and their riders, Eragon wrote the book. I mean, it is the book.
The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin
Wizards only, fools! While that isn’t a direct quote from Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, it might as well be. See, wizards are the only beings on the world-spanning archipelago of Earthsea that are truly able to understand and live in total harmony with the natural world. Well, dragons too. We’ll get to them. This story begins with a young boy named Ged, who sets out from his humble island of goat farmers to become the greatest wizard the world has ever seen! While the story begins in the classic “chosen one” high fantasy style, Le Guin flips the script by weaving a tale where perfect balance with nature, not power, is the ultimate goal of all wizardly achievements. Ged learns this lesson after his pursuit of power causes him to accidentally summon a shadow monster doppelgänger from the land of the dead, which is trying to shake him down for his immortal soul. Some things you have to learn the hard way.
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Inspired by Paradise Lost, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials is the story of one little girl’s quest to kill God. In a world almost but not quite like our Edwardian England, Lyra Belacqua runs afoul of a globe-dominating church after discovering a metaphysical secret of the universe that the clergy would rather keep, well, secret. Accompanied by a ferret that serves as the living embodiment of her soul (yes, really) Lyra goes on a dimension-hopping quest to learn the truth of reality and befriend some talking polar bears and gay angels in the process. While it’s told through a child’s eyes, His Dark Materials is a profound meditation on romance and sin, one that asserts that humanity’s inevitable loss of innocence is not the source of our damnation, but the very essence of our divinity.
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