For teens who feel like an outsider or are navigating a new, challenging environment, this book explores themes of belonging, identity, and resilience.
Reach for this book when your teen is grappling with feelings of isolation or the challenge of fitting into a new environment. This young adult fantasy novel follows a group of teens exiled to a monster-filled wilderness for possessing forbidden magic. To survive, they must learn to trust each other and embrace the very differences that made them outcasts. The Exiles uses its high-stakes adventure to explore deep, relatable themes of loneliness, identity, and resilience. It is an empowering story about finding your own community and discovering that your greatest perceived weaknesses might just be your greatest strengths, perfect for readers aged 13 and up.
Deals with themes of rejection, banishment, and loneliness from family and society.
Sensitive Topics
The core sensitive topics are social ostracization and rejection, handled metaphorically through the fantasy concept of being exiled for one's innate magical abilities. The approach is entirely secular. The resolution is hopeful, focusing on the protagonists' success in creating their own supportive community (a 'found family'), though the larger societal injustice that exiled them remains unresolved, leaving room for character growth and potential sequels.
Ideal Reader
A teen, 13-16, who feels like an outsider at school, is struggling to find their friend group, or is navigating the social anxiety of a new place. They enjoy high-stakes fantasy and survival stories, but are ultimately drawn to character-driven narratives about finding your people.
Parent Prep
Parents should be aware of some intense survival scenes and monster encounters which, while not graphically violent, can be suspenseful. The initial scenes of banishment and rejection are emotionally potent. The book can be read cold, but a parent could open a conversation by asking, "Have you ever felt like something that makes you different was seen as a bad thing?" A parent overhears their child saying things like, "No one understands me," "I feel like a total freak," or expresses frustration and sadness about not fitting in or being able to make friends after a recent move or school change.
Age Experience
A younger teen (13-14) will likely connect most with the adventure, the magic system, and the clear injustice of the situation. An older teen (15-18) is more likely to appreciate the allegory for social prejudice, the complexities of building a new society, and the theme of choosing one's own family and identity over the one assigned by birth.
What Makes It Special
Unlike many YA fantasies that focus on grand rebellions or heists, The Exiles is distinguished by its intimate focus on wilderness survival and community building. The conflict is as much internal (learning self-acceptance) and interpersonal (learning to trust) as it is external (fighting monsters). Its unique blend of a raw survival story with a found-family emotional core sets it apart.
Read plot summary
A group of teenagers, each possessing a unique and feared form of magic, are declared 'Exiles' and banished from their kingdom to a harsh, untamed wilderness. Faced with dangerous creatures and a brutal environment, they must overcome their mutual suspicion to form an alliance. The narrative follows their journey of survival as they learn to combine their powers, forge a new kind of family, and uncover a political conspiracy that suggests their banishment was a calculated plot to remove them.
This overview was generated by AI based on the book's content and reviews, and may not capture every nuance.
Discussion Prompts
1
The characters are exiled because their magic is seen as dangerous by society. When is it right for a society to fear something new or different? When does that fear become prejudice?
2
At first, the exiles don't trust one another and try to survive alone. What specific event or challenge forces them to start working together? How does their view of each other's 'dangerous' magic change over time?
3
Near the end, the group has a chance to send a message back to their old kingdom, but they choose instead to focus on building their own new home. Would you have made the same choice? What does 'home' mean to them by the end of the story?
4
Each character's magic is a metaphor for a unique personality trait or skill. Which character's ability did you relate to the most and why?
