General Discussion

Scythe by Neal Shusterman! by far one of my favs!
ill just paste the description here from google
"A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery: humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death. Now Scythes are the only ones who can end life—and they are commanded to do so, in order to keep the size of the population under control.
Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a scythe—a role that neither wants. These teens must master the “art” of taking life, knowing that the consequence of failure could mean losing their own."
_also I love his other series, the unwind series which is a good sci-fi ish series

I also recommend reading Six of Crows! I've yet to read the sequel, but the first book itself is great! The Lunar Chronicles and The Young Elites series are also books I recommend. Several people have already described Six of Crows, so I'll describe my other recommendations (using Wikipedia to help refresh my memory):

The Lunar Chronicles is more-or-less a loose sci-fi take on fairytales (Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Snow White specifically), which all comes together as the series progresses. To be more specific (and without spoiling much), it takes place in the future where humans have colonized the moon, and the descendants of said colonists developed special abilities that make them more dangerous than normal humans (they're called Lunars). Meanwhile, on Earth, a devastating plague is sweeping through the land, and the cure is on Luna (the moon), but they won't give it to Earth. So, eventually, the main characters' goals become to cure this disease and overthrow the queen of Luna.

The Young Elites series is a fantasy trilogy that takes place in more medieval times. Before the events of the trilogy, a plague swept through the land, killing mostly adults. Many of the child survivors (known as malfettos) gained markings, and as they aged, they began to be treated poorly, and some were even executed. A good chunk of them also developed godlike powers, making them especially dangerous. These kids are teenagers/young adults now, and the main character's powers develop at the beginning of the first book. Before she is executed, she is saved by a group of malfettos, who take her in as one of their own. What happens next? Well, that would be going into spoiler territory!

Let me start off by saying I absolutely second the calls of people saying to try the Lord of the Rings books as well as any work by Brandon Sanderson. Now that that's out of the way, let's hit the ground running with some more fantasy novels and series.

The Godspeaker trilogy
This is a series I personally recommend, but I hope you can stomach written descriptions of war, blood, and slavery. This is a series that's incredibly thick for the three books in the installment, and the omnibus edition is thicker than a phone book. It's very satisfying to read through, but it's definitely full of much touchier subjects than some people might like to handle.

I'd also recommend other books by Karen Miller such as the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker series and surrounding books. The prequel novel is around 700 pages and, if you like a mix of magic and alchemy, I highly advise just reading A Blight of Mages. The Kingmaker series has a fixation on magic with a cost of blood and material, and makes for a thrilling read.

The Black Magician
Another impressive fantasy series with a fixation on magic being something with a cost instead of done freely, the series is one where magic is something born into you and can be honed, but demands a certain amount of energy and control to be able to use. It's a favorite of mine as well due to having canonically gay characters who are written as real people, and handling the politics of things like homophobia in high court and addressing the abuses of people in positions of authority make for a read with more intrigue than just magic.

The trilogy is only the first three books of the series, so take care to start at the beginning if you pick any of these up. Trudi Canavan is the author.

A Darker Shade of Magic
V.E. Schwab is an author I was introduced to through her 2015 release of ADSOM, an incredibly thought out fantasy novel with a connection to four different worlds through London in the shades of black, white, grey, and red. Schwab does an impeccable job at painting the scenes of worlds either full of magic, lacking in magic, or having lost their magic, while the pathways to the multiple Londons are largely blocked to keep from succumbing to magic like Black London did.

I really recommend Ancillary Justice and the rest of the Imperial Radch series!

The Dragonback Series by Timothy Zahn. I really can't think of another series that I've enjoyed more than this one, and it's criminally underrated and vastly overshadowed by Zahn's other works.

"Jack Morgan is dealing with more trouble than any young man deserves. Raised to be a professional thief and con artist by his late uncle Virgil, he’s survived on his uncle’s spaceship with the help of an AI program. But when he’s accused of a crime he actually didn’t commit, Jack is forced to flee to a remote, uninhabited planet where he can stay off the radar for a while.

His solitude is soon interrupted when a ship crashes on Jack’s hideout after a terrible space battle. There’s only one survivor: a warrior called Draycos, whose reptilian race is being targeted for extinction.

The good news is that if Jack helps Draycos, the odd creature might be able to help clear Jack’s name. The not-so-good news is that to survive, Draycos must bond—physically and mentally—with a sentient being to use as his “host.”

And it looks like Jack is the only sentient being around . . ."

(semi-spoiler: Draycos is an alien that turns two dimensional and literally rides around on Jack like a freaking full body dragon tattoo and it is so freaking awesome. Mr "I'm not a con anymore" constantly exploits this to do explicitly shady things.)

@Luckless pinging myself to come back ^^

@princeofseaglass - The Black Magician series looks good!!

Is the Ambassador’s Mission the book to start with after I read the Black Magician trilogy? I’m unsure what series to read after Black Magician.