Top Ten Tuesday: Frequently Used Title Structures for Young Adult Fantasy Books

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week there is a new topic for bloggers to choose and list their top ten. This week’s theme is Frequently Used Title Structures for Young Adult Fantasy Books.

This was always something part of me noticed, but that until this Top Ten Tuesday topic I never paid too much attention to. Now I have and it’s become something I can’t get my mind to un-notice.

When it comes to young adult book titles, especially in the fantasy genre, there’s a common structure that seems to be everywhere; ‘[Something] of [Something] and [Something]’. The titles below aren’t even all the ones I was able to find, they’re just all the ones I managed to find before my brain started melting down.

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It’s something you see a lot in Laini Taylor’s books. In fact the only book where the title doesn’t have that specific structure is Strange the Dreamer. One book out of six releases.

• Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
• Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor
• Night of Cake and Puppets by Laini Taylor
• Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor
• Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor

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Another author who uses the same, or similar, structures for book titles is Cassandra Clare. Granted a lot of her releases are ‘[Something] of [Something]’ rather than ‘[Something] of [Something] and [Something]’ but they still all count for the purpose of this post.

• City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

In fact the whole of The Mortal Instruments series.

• Lord of Shadows by Cassandra Clare
• Queen of Air and Darkness by Cassandra Clare

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• Daughter of the Burning City by Amanda Foody
• Song of the Current by Sarah Tolcser
• Kingdom of Ash and Briars by Hannah West

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Sarah J. Maas has used the ‘[Something] of [Something]’ title structure for her Throne of Glass series.

• Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
• Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas
• Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas
• Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas
• Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas
• Tower of Dawn by Sarah J. Maas

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And Rick Riordan started doing the same with his Heroes of Olympus series.

• The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan
• The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan
• The House of Hades by Rick Riordan
• The Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan

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• The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough
• Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
• The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

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So what do you think? Did you take part in this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, if so let me know what common words or title structures you see in the books you read. Is your brain as battered as mine after reading this post, is this something you’re ever going to be able to un-notice?

If the answer is no I clearly haven’t done the job I set out to do with this post.