Daughters of a Dead Empire

O'Neil has the beautiful ability to weave historical fiction in with fantasy and YA while also subverting (to some extent not even including) some of the overused YA tropes. I'm a romance junkie, no doubt about it, but I also appreciate books without romance - we NEED more of them, especially in the young adult genre. Big kudos to O'Neil for weaving so much into this beautiful book and doing it flawlessly.