7 of the Most Fascinating Magic Systems in YA Fantasy

Wild Magic, by Tamora Pierce
In her first quartet, Song of the Lioness, Pierce introduces us to Alanna of Trebond, a young woman who so yearns to be a knight that she disguises herself as a boy. The other thing she’s hiding, in addition to her breasts and period? Her magical Gift. It’s bestowed on many inhabitants of Tortall, but Alanna is terrified to use it. What she grapples with is run-of-the-mill magic—and then there’s Daine, the protagonist of Wild Magic, who has a form of the Gift that’s never been seen before. Over the course of the Immortals series, she talks to animals, joins a wolf pack, calls up a kraken to sink a pirate fleet, and even resurrects an army of animal skeletons when she thinks she’s lost Numair, the mage who has been helping her to hone her unpredictable powers.

Uprooted, by Naomi Novik
Not unlike Numair and Daine are the Dragon, a fierce wizard living in a tower, and his reluctant pupil, Agnieszka. Every ten years the Dragon takes a pretty young woman from the local villages for his own unexplained reasons—but when he recognizes a magical gift in plain, stubborn Agnieszka, he’s forced to take her instead. Adding to his frustration is the way her powers don’t immediately adapt to the style of study he’s followed for at least a century; she needs to think of her magic as an intuitive stream, rather than something she can force into the vessel of the Dragon’s spells. But will the odd weavework Agnieszka and the Dragon create be a match for the centuries-old evil that has filled the Wood and is slowly encroaching on humankind?

The Seven Songs of Merlin, by T.A. Barron
Barron’s five-part series filling in the holes in Merlin’s youth is filled with epic, lush magic—but the second installment is most indicative of the great magician’s magical adolescence. To save his mother’s life, he must master the seven major arts of wizardry: Changing, Binding, Protecting, Naming, Leaping, Eliminating, and Seeing. Most importantly, instead of taking these tasks at face value, Merlin must discover the “soul” of each song. Some, like Changing, utilize metaphors like the caterpillar to the butterfly, but others, like Protecting, are far less intuitive. Considering that the later books in the series trade songs for fires, mirror, and wings, and Merlin has a lot of learning to do.

Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine
In this case, the magical “system” exists within one body: that of poor Ella of Frell, given the “gifted” of perfect obedience by a well-meaning fairy. The ways in which her stepmother and stepsisters exploit this curse are appalling, as Ella is forced to give up everything she holds dear: a necklace from her late mother, her closest friendship, a fledgling love affair with Prince Charmont…actually, that last one may endanger her most of all. But the most fascinating part of the book is when Ella gets what she should want, forcing her to find a loophole that allows her to set her fate on her own terms.

Sabriel, by Garth Nix
Hailing from one of three magical bloodlines, Sabriel’s power draws from both life and death: As an Abhorsen (like her father before her), she uses necromancy as well as benevolent magic to guard the gates of Death. Much of the Abhorsens’ magic is bound up in magical bells, whose ringing can bring effects ranging from a light sleep to death, and a sword, both gifted to Sabriel by her father when his life is in danger. However, to track down her father and defeat the evil Kerrigor, Sabriel must herself enter Death in order to gain valuable information. It’s a dangerous, knife’s-edge dance, one that could find her slipping beyond even magic’s ability to bring her back.

Circle of Magic: Sandry’s Book, by Tamora Pierce
I’ve got to include another Pierce book, because she went to great pains to make her Circle of Magic series incredibly different from the Song of the Lioness and its Gift. In Emelan, four young misfits from disparate social classes are brought together because of their strange affinities for various living and inanimate objects: Sandry can bind light to thread, Tris matches the weather to her moods, Briar has a green thumb times a thousand, and Daja understands fire on a subconscious level. When an earthquake traps them together, a desperate Sandry binds their magics using her weaving so they can survive—but it unexpectedly binds them in an almost telepathic way. Even as later adventures see the young mages striking out to different corners of the earth and collecting their own apprentices harboring odd magic, they’re never too far away from each other.

Shadow and Bone, by Leigh Bardugo
In building the world of her Grisha Trilogy, Bardugo decided to make the usual darkness witnessed in fantasy novels into a literal, visceral thing: the Shadow Fold, tearing apart the nation of Ravka with its swaths of darkness and the terrifying creatures within. But in the middle of a battle in the Shadow Fold, war orphan Alina unconsciously summons magic she didn’t know she had—more shocking, it’s the power to summon light, never before seen even among the Grisha, or wizard soldiers. In a 2013 interview, Bardugo explained how she painstakingly constrained her own magical system, devising molecular chemistry for the smallest flick of a wand and muttered spell. It’s this “Small Science” Alina must master, along with whatever other physics her special magic challenges.