Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Today’s theme was frequently used words in titles of a genre of choice. Let me tell you, when I saw the theme I knew exactly what I was going to do! There are so many titles in Young Adult Fantasy that sound very similar, the same few words seem to be used over and over again. Here are some the words I find are most frequently in YA Fantasy titles!
1. QUEEN
Examples: The Queen’s Rising, The Star-Touched Queen, Red Queen, The Hundredth Queen, The Queen and the Curse
2. FIRE
Examples: Ice Like Fire, Trial by Fire, Girls of Paper and Fire, Heir of Fire, Spindle Fire
3. DARK/DARKNESS
Examples: One Dark Throne, Gathering Darkness, Our Dark Duet, The Beauty of Darkness, The Queen of Air and Darkness
4. BLOOD
Examples: Isle of Blood and Stone, Days of Blood and Starlight, Blood Passage, Silver in the Blood, Frostblood
5. KINGDOM
Examples: Crooked Kingdom, Kingdom of Ash and Briar, Falling Kingdoms, To Kill a Kingdom, The Bridge Kingdom
6. SHADOW
Examples: Shadow and Bone, The Shadow Queen, Lord of Shadows, From the Earth to the Shadows, Queen of Shadows
7. BONE
Examples: Children of Blood and Bone, Ink and Bone, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Ivory and Bone, City of Bones
8. CROWN
Examples: A Crown of Wishes, Crown of Midnight, The Crimson Crown, The Crown’s Game, Three Dark Crowns
9. ASH/ASHES
Examples: An Ember in the Ashes, Ash Princess, Snow Like Ashes, Ash & Bramble, Kingdom of Ash
10. SONG
Examples: The Song Rising, Song of Blood & Stone, Song of the Current, This Savage Song, Wintersong
It’s funny how many of the titles I used as examples could have been used more than once! Which words have you noticed are used frequently in Young Adult Fantasy titles? Let me know in the comments!
Paws & Paperbacks 
This is quite an interesting little thing to think about. Familiarity definitely makes one more likely to pick something up!
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Definitely a marketing strategy for YA books!
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This is such a good list! I was thinking of doing Fantasy titles too, but I could never beat what you put together!
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Thank you so much! 😊 There were so many other words I could have used that a second list could have been made!
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Song is a great one! Queen is topping every list I see, including my own.
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I agree, Queen seems to be the most popular!
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I don’t read much YA fantasy, so I’m not very up on trends in titling there, but once you start listing them — wow! I actually have noticed those words a lot. Crazy.
Happy TTT!
Susan
http://www.blogginboutbooks
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Thank you! It’s crazy how similar they all start sounding once you put a list together!
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There are so many “Queen” books! I chose fantasy for my list this week, too. I get fantasy titles confused all the time because a lot of them are similar. I wish authors/publishers would be more creative.
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Totally agree. It seems most titles these day follow the pattern: [Noun] of [Blank] and [Blank], and then they just choose the words from the list!
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I just had to look at my bookshelf to count these up, so many of my books have similar words in the titles and I never took too much notice till now
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I felt the same way! Many of them sounded so similar that I was starting to confuse myself haha
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I completely agree with your list – Assassin is used often too
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Ooh that’s a good word too! There were so many other words I was going to use that I could probably make a second list!
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All these answers are so true!! Great post! ❤
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