 and it is Middle Game by Shona McGuire. Could you do everything that I'm doing today? Friends, welcome back to my channel. I hope you are well. My name is Megan and in today's video we're going to be going through my favourite fantasy books. I'm really excited to do this video because fantasy is definitely one of my most read genres. I read a lot of fantasy and I thought I would just go through my favourites. They're both adult and young adult. We have both here but predominantly adult. Actually I find I do prefer adult fantasy. Before we get into it make sure you subscribe if you haven't already and hit the like button and yeah there's a lot new of you. There's a lot new of you. Was she tried? At least you know she... There's a lot more of you here that I knew recently. So thank you for all your support. I'm having so much fun chatting to you all. So first I'm going to talk about by far my favourite fantasy series. I read this series before I started my booktube channel and I'm still completely in love with it. Still completely obsessed. It's still my favourite... Oh my god I want to reread this so bad. And it is The Wind and Night series of which The Bear and the Nightingale is the first one. So this is by Catherine Arden. Wow I have such fond memories of reading this. So in this we follow Vassia. She lives in Russia, kind of old Russia and it's a very difficult book to explain. Try it! Try it! Try it! It's her discovering magic and folklore and the truth of old Russian magic and the tales of the Winter King and whether the Winter King is true. We are basically following her as she grows in power and responsibility and in learning magic. She has to and this one really saved the town that she lives in and then in this one she has to save her city and and this one she kind of has to save the world and it's a brilliant coming of age series. It is so whimsical, so magical. If you enjoy feeling like you've stepped into a fairy tale I've never read a book that quite makes you feel like that. You know I've read books that have the atmosphere of the fairy tale or plot is very similar but even the way that this is written feels like a fairy tale. It is like laced with magic throughout the whole thing and I adore it. I love it so, so much and this is just criminally underrated in my opinion. Like not enough people speak about it. A fair few do but in my opinion this should be one of the most popular series on booktube and it's not. It's not. I was angry. I was angry. There's other fantasy books, other fantasy series that get way more hype when they are average and this book is just, this series is incredible. I think, I don't know what my favorite is. I've always said the girl in the tower but they're all wonderful and I, oh my god I want to reread them. So bad. The way that religion is brought into this, the way that magic is brought into this, the family relations, if you love reading about like sibling relationships there's some really interesting dynamics in here and in the last one, the witch of the witch, the magic just goes beyond anything. Like the way that the world grows with Vassia is really, really special in my opinion. There's a marked difference in the kind of expansion of the world of the magic in each book but it feels so natural and oh my god. I could speak about this series forever in my opinion. Perfect. Catherine Arden can do no wrong. My queen. My queen. This is a place for legends. Okay. It's, it's so good. It's so good. I want to reread it so bad because obviously I read it like I said before I had booktube so like I haven't read it on my channel so if you're interested in reading this maybe this winter I'm thinking I might do a bit of like a read-along for this just for fun but I don't know if anyone would want to do it so let me know if you would want to do it and we could maybe read one a month and have live shows and discussions around it because I love it. I love it so dearly. So um let me know if you'd be interested in that because I'm kind of holding off on doing it because I just don't know be something that people would be interested in. Okay so my next favorite fantasy book is one that I speak about. I speak about all these quite a lot actually but it is The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern aka the most beautiful book in existence. Nothing else can top it. Nothing even comes close. Even the inside part of me wants another copy so I can have one put this on and then I can have one just showing the the book without the sleeve. So this is a bit of a difficult book to explain. It is again very whimsical, very magical. We follow Zachary as he finds a book which has something written in it that happened to him as a child and he doesn't know how anyone else could know that happened to him and it is also like a story of other twisting tales that slowly come together and you slowly learn how they all tie in and it's a very difficult book to explain. It's a story about books, it's a story about magical worlds, it's a story about pirates, it's a story about The Starless Sea, it's a story about time and getting lost in time. It's amazing. The power that that has, the intelligence that that has, the clearance that that has, the access that that has, the influence that that has, the profile that that has. This book I felt so drawn in and it just elicited that feeling for me of wow I am completely blown away by this book which doesn't happen that often like when rude. Don't be fucking rude. You can like a book and you can love a book but being completely blown away by a book is a whole different story and I just felt like this was unlike anything I'd ever read. Erin Morgan's writing is some of my favorite writing ever. I am so sad that she only puts out a book like every eight years or something. I need more from her, I need another book from her next year. If you have not read The Starless Sea yet, don't be scared off by it because I know Erin Morgan's books can be kind of intimidating. They're fairly big and just the writing is kind of a lot to take on and to understand and to take in. It is an intimidating book however it is just one of the most magical things I've ever read. So if you want that magic like these these two books that kind of whimsy are perfect for that. Quickly I want to talk about a book I don't have with me. It's because I lent it out to a family friend. Another fantasy book that I absolutely love is Night House by Lou Bardugo. I know this wasn't the most popular when it first came out like I think a lot of people had mixed feelings about it but I read it. It was the first book that I'd ever read by Lou Bardugo. I loved it. I loved it. So in this we follow Alex Stern as she is given a second chance. She has lived a really troubled life. She's lived a really difficult life and someone gives her a second chance to go to Yale and basically there's a lot of secret societies at Yale and she her job in return for getting to go to Yale is to monitor these secret societies and their magic and basically making sure they're not getting up to anything they shouldn't be getting up to. It's a really hard hitting story so make sure you check the trigger warnings for this if you need to. I thought the plot of this was brilliant. It's quite a complex story. This was again one that people said like oh I didn't understand it. I didn't get it but I think it's definitely a book you should read physically at the very least. I wouldn't recommend the audiobook because I've listened to it but I think because of its complexity and the layers that it has there's a lot going on and it shifts back and forward in time and we're dealing with all kinds of mysteries. It's kind of a murder mystery in some regard. There is a girl that has been killed right at the start and that spurs on a lot of the story but it's definitely not the main focus of it. It's kind of just the catalyst for a lot of the rest of the story to happen. When everything was revealed for this book like the ending was incredible to me. The last page. The plot was sneaking up on me. I'm so excited for the next book because oh my god oh my god it was so I can't wait I can't wait for the next book. It's just so sinister and so like based on the occult and oh I love ghosts because of this. I'm just like give it to me. This is the spooky, spooky, cocky and creepy special edition. Oh it's it's it's so good so if you haven't picked up Ninth House because you heard some not great things about it read it. I've made everyone in my life read it and they've all loved it. Next is my only YA one on this list actually I just realised and it is Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Nyang so I love this book. I speak about it quite a lot. This is about a girl called Leigh who is off the paper case in society which is the lowest oh my god is it case or cast. I always get it wrong and people always make fun of me. Cast. Paper cast. Crickets. Crickets. Every year some girls are chosen to essentially be forced to sleep with the king and they all go and live at the palace and Leigh is one of them and it's a really difficult story it deals with rape and sexual assault and so that's something you need to know going into it however I think it's so important these topics are discussed in YA and I've always said that with all the girls Natasha Nyang really shows so many different reactions to going through that trauma they all reaction different ways which I thought was a really great aspect of it because not everyone reacts the same way to going through such a terrible thing and in this is the story of Leigh trying to rebel against what she's been forced into whilst she also falls in love with another one of the girls there which is like such a beautiful thing and I love their relationship I didn't love the second one in this series quite as much I love the first one however I'm holding out hope that the final book of the series will be as great as this one because I feel like the middle one had a bit of middle book syndrome like it was just a bit ploddy a bit slow and you could feel that but I still give it four stars I still really enjoyed it however I recognise it's not as good as this I just love the characters I love the world I love Natasha Nyang's writing I think she's one of the best YA authors that are out there her world feels so vivid I think it's really hard in YA fantasy to have as vivid a world as this it feels so complex and so just like I know everything that is going on in this world in terms of politics in terms of society you know like I really understand it and I think that's a really hard thing to do so I love this book so so much I can't wait for the last one in series and I would really recommend it then my next recommendation is a book that really transcends genre and so I don't really know what genre to put it in that's why I'm putting it in this video because I think it is mainly fantasy but a bit of sci-fi a bit of everything really and it is middle game by Shonda Maguire could you do everything that I'm doing today this is one of my new favourite books we follow twins called Roger and Dodger who have been made by this kind of alchemist scientist and he wants to use them to ascend to godhood to take control of the world it's the story of them growing up separately they've been pushed apart but they can speak to each other and it's a story of them coming together and a part throughout their lives and understanding what's going on with them and the relationship between them and rebelling against what they've been forced into but also then accepting what they've been forced into it's it's it's so good it's so good it's really just like somebody pressed a button on a cultural reset Shonda Maguire is a genius we love her mind and genius you need to trust me that this book is great because I don't have the words to tell you how great it is you just have to trust me I don't make the rules and then I've left this book till last because it does kind of spoil my next reading vlog that will be coming out next weekend but it is the popular by R.F. Quang so I literally just finished this I gave it five stars kind of like a 4.75 but in my head now yeah it's a five star if we're completely honest so we follow Rin who is an orphan her fostered parents want to marry her off and she's like nah bitch I ain't doing that so she takes a really hard exam and she gets into the top military academy and it's the story of her learning about herself at that academy and then going on beyond it and learning about her power and the power of the gods in her society and it's a hard book like out any of these books this is the one that people often say you need to be aware of the trigger warnings going into this there's one particular chapter that is incredibly hard to read you probably know that already if it's been on your radar but Rin doesn't always make choices choices right from the get-go that you agree with and you know she's not going to make choices that you agree with and that's part of the brilliance of this she's not perfect I think often in fantasy they always make the right choices although you make one mistake you know the the protagonist in the book but Rin is constantly I wouldn't say I wouldn't call them mistakes but she's going down paths that you as the reader wouldn't necessarily have gone down which is a really really interesting thing to read and one of my favorite things about this Rin's growth and the growth of those around her and the situations they're put in is just incredible to read and I think the writing in this was amazing the fact that the author was only 19 when she wrote this is incredible my dad because this is my dad he just got the second one the dragon republic and it is big I thought the poppy wall was big but no what oh my god that's even scarier when I put them next to each other I couldn't wait to get around to the dragon republic it that's very scary let's not recognize how scary that is right now but the poppy wall was brilliant and I can't wait to talk more in depth about this in my next vlog so there we have it that is all my favorite fantasy books let me know down below what some of your favorite fantasy books are and whether you've read and loved any of these I'd love to talk to you about it thank you as always for all your support on this channel it means the world and I will see you very very soon with another video bye