My library informed me that this year was the Return of the YA Vampire, and indeed we did see a number of YA vampire novels this year, not least of which was Stephenie Meyer’s latest addition to the Twilight saga, Midnight Sun.
For myself, I discovered I had read a number of very good books focused on witches and witchcraft.
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik was an interesting YA title that followed a teenage witch at a boarding school for witches, who is aggressively beleagured by her powerful talent in black magic that she is trying to avoid using. The school is regularly invaded by monsters who feed on the students and their magic and also surround the school, making survival until graduation and escape afterwards a deadly challenge. This is significantly different from Novik’s previous endeavors in alternate history and fantasy, and presents a unique twist on the “boarding school” genre.
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir is a strange combination of space opera, necromancy, and political maneuvering. In this book, there are nine Houses, each responsible for a different variety of magic. The Ninth House specializes in necromancy. When a competition for a high position working with the Emperor arises, each House is required to send a magic user with a bodyguard. Gideon, much against her will, reluctantly agrees to accompany Harrow, the powerful and very unpleasant necromancer who heads the Ninth House. I can’t even try to explain the puzzles, magic, politics, personalities, and relationship dynamics in this book except to say that Gideon and Harrow are a compelling pair, regardless of whether you love, hate, or are exasperated by either or both of them. The sequel, Harrow the Ninth, came out recently as well, and is also mindbending and disturbing.
Cemetery Boys by 
The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave is a terrifying work of historical fiction strongly grounded in fact, about a fishing village of women in an isolated, freezing location are left to manage everything on their own when the men are all swept away during a storm while they are on the water. Once the government steps in, the idea that women could be competent enough to take care of themselves suggests that at least some of them must be witches. I wrote a more extensive review of this book earlier this year and I really suggest that you read it, and then read the book.
Conjure Women by Afia Atakora is an #OwnVoices work of historical fiction with threads of horror and the supernatural throughout. It alternates between “slaverytime” and “freedomtime”. The “slaverytime” storyline takes place on an unnamed plantation in the South and follows Miss May Belle, the conjure woman responsible for healing, midwifery, and sometimes, casting curses and spells. The “freedomtime” storyline is told from the point of view of Rue, Miss May Belle’s daughter, who has taken over her responsibilities as conjure woman. The former enslaved people from a burned down plantation have built a hidden village nearby. While they respect Rue at first, after she delivers a baby with a caul over its head and an illness she can’t cure causes children to sicken and die, they turn against her. There’s no way to avoid horror when evoking slavery, and Atakora based a lot of her story on oral accounts and slave narratives. While the pacing was relatively slow and not everyone will appreciate the shifting points of view, I found this a compelling story.
The Fireman by Joe Hill. The pandemic is caused by a spore that spreads a condition called “dragonscale” that eventually causes the infected to overheat and spontaneously combust. Harper, the main character, who is infected, pregnant, and a nurse, is a complex and fascinating character coping in the midst of panic, disease, isolation, and fear.
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. First off, I am biased towards anything by Connie Wills, but this really is a compelling book, impossible for me to put down once I start it. Willis has written a series of time travel novels and short stories that take place at Oxford University, mostly in the history department, headed by Mr. Dunworthy. Kivrin, one of his students, has been preparing to visit England near the time of the Black Plague, but due to an error in timing, ends up in the midst of it, a stranger in a community that is disintegrating and literally dying. In the future, plague is spreading speedily through Oxford, which has been locked down in quarantine procedures, and when it is discovered that the tech running the time machine is patient zero, Dunworthy’s superior shuts down the department entirely, leaving Kivrin lost in the past and pandemics raging in both places. Despite the terrifying circumstances, Willis manages to find humor in the humanity and oddities of many of the characters in a story that is dead serious.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. This book has gotten plenty of attention, including compliments from George R. R. Martin. It is post-apocalyptic, varying between a storyline about a group of musicians and actors traveling between the small communities left after a pandemic killed off most of the people, and vignettes about the past, and the people who died from the disease, described in a memorable fashion.
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks: If ever you wanted an alternate history of how an outbreak can spread and lead to massive changes in the world, you’ve got it here. Brooks uses a different narrative approach than readers may be used to, with his work consisting of short narratives, or “interviews” with different people who lived through the outbreak and the zombie war.
Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra: In this series of graphic novels, disease has killed off all the men except one, Yorick Brown, and his pet Capuchin monkey Ampersand. I don’t consider this horror, but it is a brilliant concept, and pulled off beautifully.
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