Fantasy Adventure

But Jason Asano is settling into his new life. Now, a contest draws young elites to the city of Greenstone to compete for a grand prize. Jason must gather a band of companions if he is to stand a chance against the best the world has to offer. While the young adventurers are caught up in competition, the city leaders deal with revelations of betrayal as a vast and terrible enemy is revealed. Although Jason seems uninvolved, he has unknowingly crossed the enemy’s path before.

With The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3, award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and 27 of the best stories published by both new and established authors in 2017.

Hundreds of years ago, the realm walls collapsed, and Earth was flooded with mythical creatures. Now, dungeons dot the landscape, releasing demons that terrorize and destroy everything in their path. If they aren’t stopped, humans won’t be the only endangered species. To preserve life and win the war against demons, protectors from different species all over the world have downloaded level-up programs to help them fight.

When Jack Harrison climbed down the short ladder from the airlock and stepped onto the debris covered soil, the ground crackled with the sound of dried leaves and twigs.

On the run and out of chances, he guides his ship and crew into the heart of a relic older than the galaxy itself - and find himself on the edge of an eternal war he never knew existed. The relic is a mech, lost to history and forgotten by all who remain. Built by an ancient race to be the ultimate weapon, the machine is capable of unspeakable destruction, and its discovery could unhinge the balance of power throughout known space.

James Patterson’s thrilling adventure series gets an exclusive, audio-only origin story in Daniel X: Genesis, brought to life by an all-star cast. We meet Daniel, an ordinary teen just trying to navigate his way through high school. That all changes when he discovers he has super powers and can conjure up anything, at any time, just by imagining it. Suddenly he’s meeting powerful entities who tell him he is not, in fact, a typical teenage human but an alien...and his parents died not in a car wreck but in an epic battle with an intergalactic villain.

In this unsettled world, the death of the ruler of the desert princedom becomes the catalyst for power games of magical treachery as rival factions - from the evil High Prince to the leader of the Sunrunners to the newly crowned Prince of the Desert - seek to alter the course of their world.

Soren and his band are sent to the mysterious Northern Kingdoms to gather allies and learn the art of war in preparation for the coming cataclysmic battle against the sinister Pure Ones. Meanwhile, in the Southern Kingdoms, St. Aggie's has fallen to the Pure Ones, and they are using its resources to plan a final invasion of the Great Ga'Hoole Tree.

For nearly a billion years, every known sentient species in the universe has been the result of genetic and cultural guidance - or "uplifting" - by a previously uplifted patron race. Then humans are discovered. Having already uplifted chimps and dolphins, humanity clearly qualifies as an intelligent species, but did they actually evolve their own intelligence, or did some mysterious patron race begin the process, then suddenly abandon Earth?

A deadly virus has been unleashed. A virus so vicious that it reduces the infected to a terrifying version of themselves that could lead to the end of our race as we know it. Elaina has been identified as the point of transmission and the reason for the chaos and havoc. She created the virus and let it out. Now, more than just the infected would like to see her head served up on a platter.

Through strength, guile, and diplomacy, Trent Marston has secured a magical fortress and paved the way to return his exiled princess to her throne. Now, alongside his loyal huntress, bubbly mageblade, and a beautiful hex mage, he must journey to the distant Cridor Republic and find Princess Victoria. Before he can bring Victoria home, however, Trent must thwart a devious insurgent plot against the ancient Primal Academy. If he fails, his nation could be catapulted into war with its neighbors.

Expected by his enemies to die the miserable death of a military slave, Kaladin survived to be given command of the royal bodyguards, a controversial first for a low-status "darkeyes". Now he must protect the king and Dalinar from every common peril as well as the distinctly uncommon threat of the Assassin, all while secretly struggling to master remarkable new powers that are somehow linked to his honorspren, Syl.

A chance encounter with an ancient and mysterious object awakens a latent gift, and Wulfric's life changes course. Against a backdrop of war, tragedy, and an enemy whose hatred for him knows no bounds, Wulfric will be forged from a young boy into the Wolf of the North. This is his tale.

Earth Government turned soldiers into cyborgs to terraform Mars. After a decade of hard, lonely work they are little more than the machines as which they are treated—until the arrival of female settlers awakens feelings they have almost forgotten....

First contact with a mysterious race of aliens reveals an unusual request; a family's pet dog comes to grips with the newly bestowed gift of human-like intelligence; a poet, in danger and alone on a distant world, makes unlikely allies; hundreds of years in the future, a famous hermit lives in the sea above the now-underwater Harvard University; former friends navigate unsteady peace between human refugees and the technologically superior race that saved them; in a future where human life can be infinitely extended through cybertronic rebirth, one woman declines immortality.

In this third book of The Prince Warriors trilogy, the Prince Warriors finally receive their last piece of armor - the swords they were promised when they began their adventure in the unseen realm of Ahoratos. And none too soon, for they must face the ultimate enemy, one who is gathering his Forgers and creating unthinkable new evil to stop the Prince Warriors from winning any battle ever again.

With the empire now off their backs, Forge Eizo welcomes Anne as a permanent member of the family! Eizo offers to buy everyone gifts as rewards for their hard work, but they suggest something else—each member of the household gets to spend an entire day alone with him. Meanwhile, Camilo informs Eizo of a commission request from an unexpected customer: Marius! The count is finally getting married, and he wants a set of custom wedding rings. Just one problem—Marius wants them made from meghizium, a rare and expensive metal that only a handful of blacksmiths in the world can manipulate.

A young royal from the far north, is sent south for a political marriage in an empire reminiscent of imperial China. Her brothers are dead, her armies and their war mammoths long defeated and caged behind their borders. Alone and sometimes reviled, she must choose her allies carefully. Rabbit, a handmaiden, sold by her parents to the palace for the lack of five baskets of dye, befriends the emperor's lonely new wife and gets more than she bargained for.

Mankind has failed to stop a growing rift for more than a decade. It will destroy all life on Aathon if nothing changes. But when Leo arrives with half of the human army, it seems that every leader is finally intent on stopping this growing rift together. What Leo will find out, however, is that some of these very powerful people don't see the rift as a problem. They intend to use it as an opportunity.

New York Times and USA Today best-selling author G.A. Aiken is widely celebrated for her compelling Dragon Kin series. In The Dragon Who Loved Me, Rhona the Fearless, first daughter of a proud warrior family, resents that she’s not respected for her battle prowess by the male Northland dragons. But when one barbarian dragon becomes enamored with her, she begins to relish her influence over him.