The Book Plank

Best Young-Adult of 2014 The Young Adult genre has always been a genre to my liking. When I was young I never had the chance to read such books. Being from the Netherlands it's quite a different style of books for the younger readers, though there is shift now. I like fantasy and this is what I missed in my younger years. The best thing about many of the English Young Adult books is that they are also very well suited for an older audience. The books that feature on this list all reflect this in a certain way. ANd as you can see from this list, there are many influences in Young Adult fiction, from the dystopian Metawars: Freedom Frontier by Jeff Norton (whish is sadly the conclusion to the series) or Red Rising, Pierce Brown's debut, to the Epic Fantasy of Joe Abercrombie's Half a King , or Django Wexler's excellent The Forbidden Library and finally a completely different take on superhero fiction in Brandon Sanderson's Steelheart .  --------------------...

Red Rising by Pierce Brown, Red Rising Trilogy #1 Darrow is a Helldiver, one of a thousand men and women who live in the vast caves beneath the surface of Mars, generations of people who spend their lives toiling to mine the precious elements that will allow the planet to be terraformed. Just knowing that, one day, people will be able to walk the surface of the planet is enough to justify their sacrifice. The Earth is dying, and Darrow and his people are the only hope humanity has left. Until the day Darrow learns that it is all a lie. That Mars has been habitable - and inhabited - for generations, by a class of people calling themselves the Golds. A class of people who look down at Darrow and his fellows as slave labour, to be exploited and worked to death without a second thought. Until the day Darrow, with the help of a mysterious group of rebels, disguises himself as a Gold and infiltrates their command school, intent on taking down his oppressors from the inside. B...