Olivia from our Teen Advisory Board has curated a selection of all-time favourite fantasy novels to tempt you.
Fantasy novels are totally immersive. They’re perfect for staying up late over summer (or during term!), to read on the tram home from school, or really, just to crack open in any situation! Below are four fantasy books I highly recommend escaping into.
Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor
This is the book that made me fall in love with fantasy; strange and utterly beautiful. The text is so lush and immersive that it almost feels unreal. It’s hard to – I want to call it whimsical, but I also want to call it an epic! It’s both heartfelt and arresting. There are gods, goddesses, and many, many ghosts.
Also available is a fifth anniversary edition which can be ordered here.
Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children, Book 1) by Seanan McGuire
Every Heart a Doorway is for any teen who’s felt alienated, or like they don’t belong. In other words, every teen, at one time or another. It's especially perfect for the people who grew up with Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. Each instalment in this series looks at characters who found their home in some fantasy world, and then, for whatever reason, came back.
I mark my years by the release of each new novella!
The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black
Holly Black never disappoints. This book takes the conventions of classic fairytale stories and then, with a gentle hand, breaks them. A prince is trapped in an eternal sleep, in the middle of the forest. A boy falls in love with him. A girl takes the mantle of lionhearted knight.
Monstress, Volume 1 by Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda (illus.)
Monstress explores the trauma of war through the lens of a richly imagined (and illustrated) steampunk-fantasy world – based on an alternate, 1900s, matriarchal Asia. The scale of worldbuilding is breathtaking. This is an epic.
