Best Fantasy Books for Teens

The most successful YA fantasy series of the 21st century for good reason. Riordan takes Greek mythology and places it in contemporary America — the gods are still here, their children attend a summer camp on Long Island, and monsters are real. Percy Jackson himself is one of fiction's great teenage protagonists: funny, loyal, perpetually out of his depth, and enormously likeable. The Lightning Thief is the perfect gateway drug for young readers coming to fantasy for the first time.

Collins redefined what YA could do: a dystopian fantasy with genuine political intelligence, a female protagonist who is allowed to be traumatised and complicated, and a narrative that refuses easy comfort. Katniss Everdeen is one of the most important characters in contemporary fiction — not because she is perfect but because she isn't. The Hunger Games remains the best entry point for teens who want fantasy that takes the violence and politics seriously.

Tahir's Rome-inspired fantasy is the book that proves YA doesn't have to pull its punches. An Ember in the Ashes is brutal — slavery, empire, violence against children — told through two perspectives: a slave girl who becomes a spy and a soldier who questions his loyalty to an empire he was raised to serve. The romance is convincing because the world is real. One of the best YA fantasy debuts of the last decade.

Black is the master of modern faerie fantasy and The Cruel Prince is her best work: a mortal girl raised in the Courts of Faerie who refuses to be powerless, even when every power she grasps comes with a cost. Jude Duarte is one of YA's great protagonists — not nice, not passive, not waiting to be saved. The romance with the cruel prince Cardan is genuinely compelling because both characters are doing their own scheming. Essential for older teens.

One of the great YA fantasy novels of the 1990s, still unmatched in its originality. Sabriel is the daughter of the Abhorsen — a necromancer who keeps the dead from crossing back — and must master her father's bells to save him and the Old Kingdom from a darkness that shouldn't exist. Nix's magic system is among the most original in all of fantasy, the world is genuinely strange, and Sabriel herself is a model of quiet competence under pressure. Essential reading for any teen who wants fantasy that respects their intelligence.

For older teens ready to graduate to adult fantasy. The Name of the Wind is technically adult fiction but its protagonist is a teenager for much of the book — a brilliant, reckless boy who talks his way into a school of magic and proceeds to be simultaneously the best and worst student it has ever had. Rothfuss writes with enormous craft and Kvothe is one of fiction's most compelling narrators. The ideal bridge from YA to adult fantasy.

Bardugo's Grishaverse is the most successful worldbuilding project in YA fantasy since Rowling. Shadow and Bone introduces the world and its magic; Six of Crows — the companion duology — is where the series reaches its full potential. The magic is elegant, the world is richly imagined, and the later books are genuinely complex in their politics and morality. The series that launched a thousand fantasy debuts and remains the best of its type.

Pullman's trilogy is the most ambitious YA fantasy ever written: a multiverse story about a child, a daemon, and the nature of consciousness. The Golden Compass begins as a straightforward adventure and gradually reveals itself as something more — a philosophical argument about innocence, authority, and what it means to grow up. The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass escalate relentlessly. Pullman writes for teenagers as if they are capable of handling the most difficult ideas, because they are.