Leigh Bardugo

Leigh Bardugo takes six teenage misfits, one impossible break-in, and a city built entirely out of leverage, and runs the whole thing like a master thief casing a vault. It's a heist novel with the patience to make you care about the crew before it makes you fear for them.

Leigh Bardugo's debut takes a war-torn, Russia-inflected kingdom split in two by a sea of living darkness, then hands its salvation to a plain army mapmaker who discovers she's the one Grisha who can hold back the night. It's the foundation of the whole Grishaverse, and it reads like a writer finding a world worth a decade of books.