The goblins want girls who dream so hard about being pretty their yearning leaves a palpable trail, a scent goblins can follow like sharks on a soft bloom of blood. The girls with hungry eyes who pray each night to wake up as someone else. Urgent, unkissed, wishful girls. Like Kizzy.

THE WORDS! Basically, I’m Kizzy and Laini’s writing is kissing.

Guess what it is that turns plants to coal.
Pressure.
Guess what it is that turns limestone to marble.
Pressure.
Guess what it is that turns Briony’s heart to stone.
Pressure.
Pressure is uncomfortable, but so are the gallows. Keep your secrets, wolfgirl. Dance your fists with Eldric’s, snatch lightning from the gods. Howl at the moon, at the blood-red moon. Let your mouth be a cavern of stars.

Chime came out twelve years after Franny Billingsley’s previous book, The Folk Keeper. Which means those twelve years were spent making every word perfect, am I right?

The faery handbag: It’s huge and black and kind of hairy. Even when your eyes are closed, it feels black. As black as black ever gets, like if you touch it, your hand might get stuck in it, like tar or black quicksand or when you stretch out your hand at night, to turn on a light, but all you feel is darkness.

Faeries live inside it. I know what that sounds like, but it’s true.

You can’t tell from the excerpt, but Kelly Link is a master of the short story form. In a couple of paragraphs she tells us everything we need to know, and she then does the slow reveal with the punchline at the end. BAM.

“My name’s Thomas. I’m called Harper, and sometimes Rhymer, when I busy myself to make something new, instead of robbing dead men’s songs.”
“Newfangledness,” Meg sniffed. “There’s no dishonor in holding to the old and true.”
Thomas smiled. “Newfangedness indeed. But the lords who hold old lands like new songs to honor them. And who are we to dispute with them?”

For a novel about words (and the truth of words), Ellen’s language is so subtle, lyrical, and magical, some passages near left me in tears.

Taggle was absorbed in the meat pie. “It’s covered in bread,” he huffed. “What fool has covered meat with bread?”

Also, look out Faithful, Taggle might just be giving you a run for the money for Best Fantasy Cat.

It is the first day of November and so, today, someone will die.
Even under the brightest sun, the frigid autumn sea is all the colors of the night: dark blue and black and brown. I watch the ever-changing patterns in the sand as it’s pummeled by countless hooves.
They run the horses on the beach, a pale road between the black water and the chalk cliffs. It is never safe, but it’s never so dangerous as today, race day.

Every scene is dripping with atmosphere; I can hear hooves pounding and taste the salty air. And save me some of those November Cakes!

I was beautiful, or so my father told me. My oval mirror showed me a face with nothing written on it. I had suitors aplenty but wanted none of them: their doggish devotion seemed too easily won. I had an appetite for magic, even then. I wanted something improbably and perfect as a red rose just opening.

Sigh. Emma Donoghue could write an IKEA manual and I’m pretty sure it’d be beautiful.

Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. This is why we must close them up into thick, solid books, so they cannot get out and cause trouble.

Like others on this list, this is a story about stories, clever and heartbreaking and courageous. It’s also full of beautiful lines about reading, books, bookish people, libraries and the transformative power of words.

Flowers are reincarnation. They come out of the earth of our ashes. Nothing else looks so soul-like.

Yow-ee.

You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.

In that case, my soul has a black-and-white striped canvas tent. Also, Sirens people, reveurs are the easiest group cosplay ever. We already have our Sirens red. Who’s with me?