Novel gift ideas for the teen on your list

What do the teens want this Christmas? According to these young book lovers, the perfect present contains contagion, bank robberies, betrayal on Mars and poison darts in the eye.

Ahmad Alkfri, a Grade 11 student at Longfields-Davidson Heights Secondary School, and Isabelle Walma, a Grade 10 student at Canterbury High School, recommended five novels on CBC Radio's All In A Day teen book panel. 

Their favourites genres are fantasy, adventure and dystopia. Here are their top picks.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

The teens described this book as a fantasy novel told from the perspective of several characters.

The book centres around a plot by six young criminals to conduct the greatest heist ever seen in their city, which is inspired by Amsterdam.

Alkfri said he likes the book because of the way the characters interaction and develop, a feature that makes this novel "much more than a sum of its parts."

Legend by Marie Lu 

This is the perfect book to buy for teens who are discovering dystopian fiction for the first time, Alkfri said. 

The novel is set in a futuristic North America, which has been split into two nations at war. 

One of the central characters, a military prodigy, is hired to track down a Robin Hood-type figure accused of murdering her brother. The two are eventually forced to work together to uncover the sinister secrets of their nation. 

Walma said the book falls prey to clichés and can be predictable at times, but also found it fresh and interesting, especially as an introduction to the genre. 

Zeroes by Scott Westerfeld

This sci-fi adventure novel, set in the year 2000, is the first in a series about six characters with super powers.

For Alkfri, those unique powers make the book. For example, one character, named Scam, has an inner voice that tells him exactly what to say to get whatever he wants.

"You have a really dynamic cast of characters and voices, all done completely … uniquely," Alkfri said. 

Renegades by Marissa Meyer

This novel, also the first in a series and also about humans with extraordinary abilities, revolves around a group of prodigies who emerge from a crumbled society to restore order.

Not everyone's happy about it, however, and a small faction of defeated Anarchists plot their revenge against the Renegades.

"It's got the clichés, but it's still doing new stuff," Walma told All In A Day. "The best part of the Renegades is that it's not trying to be anything other than [what] it is.... It's like, 'Yeah, this is the world of super heroes, it's stupid, we know, have some fun with it.'"

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

Red Rising is the first novel of a dystopian trilogy set in a racist, classist society on Mars. 

Darrow, a member of the lowest caste, works with his people all day to make the surface of the planet more livable for future generations. 

He soon learns humans had actually reached Mars generations earlier, and vast cities already exist on the planet. He and his people have been used as slaves by the secret ruling class. 

The book is violent, so Walma recommends it for older teens.