The writing's on the wall in this tense YA fantasy novel where the Traitors meets Hunger Games.
Sixteen-year-old Tanvi wakes up in the dreaded Daedelum Maze, a secret prison for the worst of the worst. Her memories stolen along with her past, Tanvi must work with four other lost teens, all different, all with forgotten pasts like Tanvi, who are trapped with her:
Pheelan, the privileged, but timid, mage
Larabel, the ice princess with more secrets than she has put downs
Roeger, the big bruiser with a dangerous temper
Niirah, the pauper thief just trying to survive
And then there's Singer. Half-Fey, part jailor, part saviour, the strange and alluring boy becomes Tanvi's guide in the maze as she and the others work together to unravel their pasts. All the while the mysterious and wicked Overseer Ossiltree forces Tanvi and her new 'friends' through harrowing tests of character designed to break her will, her mind, and perhaps, worst of all, her heart.
Tropes:
· Amnesia
· Strangers-to-allies- to-lovers
· Found Family
· Dystopian
· First love
· Magic
The writing's on the wall in this tense YA fantasy novel where the Traitors meets Hunger Games.
Sixteen-year-old Tanvi wakes up in the dreaded Daedelum Maze, a secret prison for the worst of the worst. Her memories stolen along with her past, Tanvi must work with four other lost teens, all different, all with forgotten pasts like Tanvi, who are trapped with her:
Pheelan, the privileged, but timid, mage
Larabel, the ice princess with more secrets than she has put downs
Roeger, the big bruiser with a dangerous temper
Niirah, the pauper thief just trying to survive
And then there's Singer. Half-Fey, part jailor, part saviour, the strange and alluring boy becomes Tanvi's guide in the maze as she and the others work together to unravel their pasts. All the while the mysterious and wicked Overseer Ossiltree forces Tanvi and her new 'friends' through harrowing tests of character designed to break her will, her mind, and perhaps, worst of all, her heart.
Tropes:
· Amnesia
· Strangers-to-allies- to-lovers
· Found Family
· Dystopian
· First love
· Magic
Someone was crying. The soft sniffles woke Tanvi, crawling into her ear and worming into her brain, parting the thick blanket of nothingness that draped her mind in peaceful quiet. She didn’t move, lying very still with her eyes closed as she used her other senses to tell her where she was.
She was lying on a hard, rough surface. A stone floor. She could feel the crumbs of gravel under her palm. Her hip hurt, a pool of heat spreading up from the pressure of the unforgiving ground. She was cold. A faint chill breeze stroking over her shoulder and down her back. Someone was moving nearby. The sniffler was fidgeting. She recognised the sound of cloth rubbing against more stone. A shuffle of shoe sole over gravel – sniffler was wearing fancy dress shoes. The kind that were good to look at but not much else. The tread slid over the ground but didn’t stick. Sniffler was whispering to himself, “Merciful Spirit, this is bad. What do I do? Think, Pheelan, think.”
Tanvi opened her eyes and sat up. Sniffler – Pheelan – startled. An apple-cheeked lad her own age, with a close crop of springy, tight dark curls and a perfectly smooth chin, his skin was deep brown. When he flinched, he knocked his wire rim glasses askew. “You scared me,” he accused, scrubbing at his eyes fiercely.
Tanvi ignored him, looking around. They were in a wide, stone walled passageway. The sharp corners made her think it was manmade. Everything was grey and starkly clean. No cobwebs. No cracks. No lichen or water stains slicking up the walls. The passage ended abruptly just behind her in a solid wall but travelled a short distance behind Pheelan before making a sharp right turn. The whisper of breeze was coming from around the bend.
Standing, Tanvi patted herself down, running her hands over her tatty wool vest, the crochet cap over her fine, flyaway hair and then down her striped trousers. She was still wearing her boots. That was good. She’d hate to lose them.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Who are you?” he shot back, scowling at her behind his glasses.
“Tanvi. I’m —” a sharp pain struck behind her eyes, whiting out her vision. She hissed, clapping a hand over her left eye. “What was that?”
“Hah,” Pheelan crowed – and wasn’t he a charmer? – “You can’t remember, can you? It’s the same with me. I woke up here and couldn’t remember how I got here, or where here is.”
Tanvi probed the back of her skull for lumps and bumps. She didn’t find any. “What is this place? A mine?”
“Clean mine,” Pheelan scoffed. “We’re underground, I think,” he said, “but this isn’t some rock hewn pit full of smelly miners. There’s magic in the air, can’t you feel it?”
“Of course not,” Tanvi retorted. “What do you take me for, one of the toffies?” Tanvi might have blanks in her memory but everyone knew only the toffs played with magic. Regular, normal folks got on with the lives just fine without messing about with arcane forces.
“You are quite clearly not from True City,” Pheelan agreed stiffly, curling his toffy lip. “Still, I’d expect even an exie to sense the enchantment in the air.”
Tanvi only shrugged. She knew little of what a toffy expected of her and cared even less. “Strange that a soft toffy like you and a girl like me should end up in a place like this,” she said instead.
“It is considerably more than strange,” Pheelan insisted, labouring to his feet. “Please tell me you have a weapon to defend us?” he asked hopefully, in his funny, stilted, toff way.
He was having a laugh. “What? You think all us externals walk round with whacking great clubs in our hands?” She rolled her eyes and asked, “You think someone’s going to jump us down here?”
“Something might,” Pheelan snapped. “This could be a holding pen for realm beasts for all I know. A whacking great club would be very helpful.”
He had a point. Not about the monsters. But there could be someone lurking around the corner looking to bash their heads in. “I don’t have anything on me,” she admitted. “What about you?”
“Of course not,” he said. “As if I’d carry a weapon. I’m a — " he grimaced, teeth clicking shut as pain creased his features.
“Enchantment get you?” she asked sympathetically.
“Not enchantment,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “This is a geas. A powerful compulsion spell. Our memories are locked behind a wall of pain. Trying to remember will only cause more pain, until the agony gives us a stroke.”
Tanvi winced. “Nice.”
“It’s hardly that,” Pheelan retorted entirely missing the sarcasm. “We need to find help. Perhaps there is a warden or watchmen here who can assist us?”
“Yeah, ‘cuz calling in the authorities is just what we need.” Tanvi crossed her arms. Her cuffs were frayed, stained yellowish-brown at the edges with age. The buttons holding the cuffs closed were long gone.
“Are you a criminal?” Pheelan demanded.
Tanvi stared at him. “What kind of question is that?”
Pheelan glared. “Only a criminal would baulk at talking to a watchman,” he insisted.
Tanvi arched both brows. “Never spent much time in Outer City have you, Toffy? All us exies know to steer clear of the watch.”
It was strange, but as long as Tanvi didn’t try to haul up a specific memory, her recollection seemed to work fine. It was like looking into a clear stream and watching her memories flicker past like fast moving silvery fish flowing with the current. The trouble started when she tried to dip a hand in and snatch out a memory. That’s when they scattered and fled upstream, leaving her holding onto nothing but water.
“We should help each other,” she decided aloud. “I mean, what else can we do?”
A high, shrill scream ricocheted off the walls. Tanvi and the toffy jumped a mile out of their skins, before landing with a bump.
“That was human,” she said, meeting his wide, frightened brown eyes.
“Oh, Spirit. We’re done for,” he groaned.
“We’re not, but someone might be. Hurry up.” Shoving past him, Tanvi ran around the corner.
She found herself in an identical passage. Cold and grey and stretching into a second, perfectly sharp ninety-degree angle, this time turning left. Tanvi’s boots scuffed loudly as she banked sharply, striking her shoulder against the wall as she skidded.
There were two people in the square, stone room she stumbled into. The windowless space looked like a cross between a particularly spacious prison cell and a very small cellar with nothing in it. Nothing except the fancy looking girl with the golden ringlets, and the big bruiser in a dirty, dockworker’s coat, his hands as big as coal shovels. They were standing in the middle of the room facing off.
“Oi, oi,” said the bruiser to the girl, holding out his big mitts as he lumbered closer. “Just shut up, alright? I don’t want to hurt you, yeah?”
“Get off me, you dunder,” the girl shouted. Peeking under the bruiser’s arm she spied Tanvi and her face lit up. “Help me, please,” she pleaded.
The bruiser whirled around. “Where’d you come from?”
A hulking slab of male, with a shaggy head of brown hair and shoulders an ox would be proud of, Tanvi had taken the bruiser for a full-grown man, but his soft, pale, features and pimples suggested he was maybe her age, or just a shade older than her sixteen and half years of life. The big lad took a step back when he saw her, raising his hand and forming the sign of protection over his heart by pressing his pointer finger against his thumbnail to form a wobbly circle.
“I don’t know where I come from,” Tanvi admitted. “I’m Tanvi. Who are you?”
“Roeger,” said the boy. He scratched a hand through his hair. He wore dark, fingerless gloves and his fingers were dirty from hard work. “Woke up in here with her ladyship over there. She started in on me soon as I breathed,” he complained.
“You tried to molest me,” the girl insisted. “I woke with your filthy hands all over my leg. Look, see! He left fingerprints on my stockings.” She hitched up her voluminous skirts, kicking up her foot and flashed Tanvi her ankle. She wore fine leather ankle boots but the heels were worn and her snow-white stockings had mending scars all over them.
“Well, mate. What have you got to say for yourself?” Tanvi asked Roeger. “She’s right about the marks. You’re shedding coal dust all over.”
He shrugged uncomfortably. “So what if I grabbed her? Her foot was nearest and I wanted to know if she was dead, is all.”
“He’s lying,” the girl persisted. She was very pale with a face made up like a doll. Her dress was mauve coloured. Her petticoats were numerous and her small hands were soft and plump. A toffy with worn boots and darned stockings, or a dishonest exie trying to fool her way through the Gate and into True City? She was pretty enough to give it a go.
“What’s your name?” Tanvi asked her.
Her pale blue eyes narrowed suspiciously. She offered her name cautiously, like she was handing out valuable information. “Larabel.”
Tanvi nodded. “Nice name.” The kind of nice toffies liked. “You’ll be alright now,” she told her. “No one is going to try anything funny, right mate?” She scowled at Roeger.
He shoved his giant hands into the deep pockets of his coat and grumbled, “I never tried nothing.”
“Don’t suppose you know where we are?” she asked the pair. “Me and the toffy are lost.” She hiked her thumb over her shoulder toward Pheelan, lurking around the corner.
“My my,” Larabel said, patting her hair and eyeing Pheelan with a sudden spark of interest. “I didn’t see you there. I’m Larabel, and you are?”
“A coward, looks like,” Roeger grinned, meanly.
Pheelan quivered indignantly as he pressed against the wall of the passage. “I am not,” he insisted, not very convincingly. “She’s just a faster runner than I am.”
Reluctantly, he slunk closer. “There’s a disguised door in the wall there. Unless we want to stay here all day, I suggest Mister Roeger should go through first.”
Roeger snorted and Tanvi rolled her eyes. “I bet you do,” they said in unison. Roeger grinned again. Tanvi sighed. “Where’s the door?” she asked. “All I see is boring stone wall.”
“There is something strange about that wall,” Larabel admitted. “Look, just there,” she pointed. “It doesn’t sit flush against the floor and there’s a ripple in the air in front of it.”
“I don’t see nothing,” said Roeger, sounding sceptical.
“Me neither, but the toffy says there’s magic afoot,” Tanvi told him.
“Don’t call me that,” the toffy snapped. “My name is Pheelan.”
“What a delightful name,” Larabel cooed, attaching herself to Pheelan’s side.
The toffy looked a mite uncomfortable about the arrangement. In fact, he looked like he was trying to decide what in the room scared him more, the door, the two exies he was stuck with, or the girl clinging to his arm like a limpet.
“Quick toffy, better start screaming ‘fore she molests you,” Roeger sneered.
Tanvi ignored their bickering. She warily approached the innocuous patch of wall Larabel had pointed out. So far, her experience since waking up had been weird but not scary. Her three companions were all very odd and she didn’t trust any of them as far as she could throw them – which in Roeger’s case was not very far at all – but nothing truly awful had happened and there was nothing to suggest it would. Forgotten instinct warned Tanvi that this was the very time something truly awful would choose to leap out at her.
“What do I do, toffy? Touch it?” she asked, hand hovering over the stone.
“I suppose so.”
“You suppose?” Tanvi glared over her shoulder. “You’re the one what knows about magic,” she reminded him. “I want a better answer than that.”
“I don’t even remember what day it is,” Pheelan whined. “How am I supposed to know if it’s safe to touch or not?”
“You’re the one what said I should do it,” Roeger pointed out. “Seems a bit suss you’re chickening out now she’s doing it.”
“I’m not a chicken,” Pheelan quivered with outrage. He reached out to grab the arm of his spectacles, roughly adjusting the positioning of his glasses on his nose. “You’re going to regret talking to me like this,” he warned the other boy.
Roeger’s grin was big and menacing. Like the rest of him. “Oh, yeah. How’s that? You got an army hiding in your back pocket? ‘Cuz I can wipe the floor with you.”
“Ignore these dunderheads and get on with it,” Larabel snapped at Tanvi.
Tanvi lifted her chin, sudden fiery heat coursing through her middle. “I don’t take orders from you, missy.”
She took a step away from the wall and toward the other girl, feeling something dark and barbed uncoil in her mind. Respect, whispered some buried voice in her thoughts. There was a code and a way of doing things on the street and this girl needed a lesson in showing the proper respect.
“Uh-oh, cat fight.” Roeger’s irritating, gap toothed grin was a flash in her peripheral vision but it was enough to bring her to a stop. She unclenched her fists.
“Look out!” Pheelan cried.
Tanvi didn’t know which way to jump and didn’t have the time anyway as a small figure blundered right through the once-solid wall and smacked into her.
“Oof!” Tanvi and her human ballast collapsed to the hard ground.
Catching the other girl’s shoulders, Tanvi levered the girl off her chest. Soft, fuzzy dark hair, tightly woven into locks trailed across her cheek as the smaller girl drew her head back, revealing a pretty heart shaped face and fear-filled, liquid dark eyes.
The girl scrambled up, twitching as she saw the others and raising her empty hands as if she wished she had something sharp and pointy to fill them. “Who are you?” she demanded. “What do you want?”
“Here we go again,” Tanvi heard Roeger mutter.
“I’m Tanvi,” she said ignoring him. A habit she thought she’d soon get used to. “The big lout over there is Roeger. That’s Larabel. And the toffy trying to squeeze through the back wall is Pheelan. I’ll wager we all want what you want: a way out of here.”
The girl relaxed fractionally, dropping her hands. She still looked like a loud noise would send her to the ceiling, however. “I’m Niirah,” she said, voice soft and hesitant.
She wore a sleeveless brown wool smock, her white slip visible through the holes in the unravelling weave. Her bare arms were skinny, her lovely face gaunt. A girl used to going hungry, Tanvi thought that she must be an edger. She was struck by a wave of pity and wariness. Even exies looked down on the dregs from the outer boroughs.
“What’s on the other side?” Pheelan was the first to speak, surprising Tanvi. His next words explained his eagerness. “You came through the door. Do you know how to get out of here?”
“She came barrelling through the door like Phedeans were after her,” Tanvi pointed out irritably. “She’d hardly do that if it was better on the other side.”
Niirah looked warily between them. “I woke up in a stone room like this one,” she said. “There was a maze of passages and I followed the breeze until I came to a dead end. There was a wall…” she trailed off with a shudder.
Tanvi cocked her head and asked, “You ran away from a… wall?”
Niirah shook her head, locks snaking over her shoulders. “I ran away from the writing on the wall. I’ll show you.”
Pivoting on her flat, kid-skin slippers as deftly as any water sprite frolicking under a waterfall, Niirah plunged back through the shimmering wall.
Roeger whistled. “That’s right weird that is,” he said. “Makes me eyes cross looking at it.”
“Then close your eyes,” snapped Larabel. She glared in Tanvi’s general direction without quite meeting her eyes. “Well, someone ought to go after her,” she said.
“Off you go then, ladyship,” Roeger chirped, he was rewarded with a venomous glare.
Pheelan inched closer to the wall. “I’m sure it’s fine. Just another series of passages like on this side.”
“And some writing on a wall,” Tanvi added.
“How scary can writing be? I bet it’s an advertisement for Diamond Jenny’s soap or something like that. The pauper simply can’t read,” Larabel bit out irritably. “Out of my way. I’ll go through first if no one else will.”
In spite of her words, she snagged Pheelan’s white shirt sleeve and propelled him through the mirage alongside her. Tanvi followed, with Roeger dogging her heels. She shivered as she crossed the invisible barrier. There was a moment of lag, as if time hitched briefly and then it was over. Stepping into an identical looking room on the other side, she turned around in time to see the wall swirl like water before hardening into stone behind them.
They caught up with Niirah after taking two right turns and a left in a long passageway that was markedly chillier than the others. “Fresh air,” Tanvi marvelled, “or something like it.”
“That’s what I thought,” Niirah agreed. “But you’ll see for yourself, there’s no way out through there.” She pointed toward a large room at the end of the passage.
The room was different than the one they’d just left. Tanvi could already see that it was larger. She could also see the lowest edges of a series of carvings engraved onto the wall opposite the open, square doorway. They made their way slowly toward the room. The engravings were words, but until Tanvi was inside, she had no way of reading what they said.
“The magic is stronger here,” Pheelan said quietly. “The source of the enchantment must be close.”
“It feels like we’re being watched,” Larabel whispered.
Tanvi bent to pick up something on the ground. She stood holding the sleek, black feather between her fingers. When she turned it, a greasy rainbow reflected across the tiny fronds. “There must be a way out,” she told the others. “See? This came from a blackbird. Or something like one.”
She saw her excitement reflected in the others’ faces. Pheelan smiled. Roeger’s shoulders dropped in relief. Larabel’s face looked a little less pinched. Only Niirah remained pensive as they entered the big room.
The walls that didn’t have words engraved into them were clad with shiny dark panels that looked like glass but showed no reflections. A strange, moving mist swirled within the panels, which rose from the floor to above even Roeger’s head. The room’s ceiling was impossibly high and shrouded in a cloudy darkness that reminded Tanvi of the mist behind the panels. The floor was the same grey stone as everywhere else and the room was entirely empty.
That was probably just as well as the writing on the wall seemed to boom through the space, as if it had the power to echo even when read silently. The huge text filled the back wall, written in three ominous lines that quaked in Tanvi’s mind like a warning and damnation both.
“What does it mean?” Larabel asked, edging away.
“What’s the matter, ladyship? Can’t read,” Roeger jeered. “It means what it says it means,” he added bitterly.
“Merciful Spirit.” Pheelan looked ill, stumbling away from the group and bracing his hand against the door frame. He fished out a chain with an icon of the All from under his shirt and raised the delicate silver circle to his lips, murmuring a soft prayer.
Tanvi stared at the wall. Gouged into the stone as if by some great and terrible burning magic were the words: You Deserve To Be Here.
Pheelan sank to his knees, back sliding down the wall. He dropped his head into his hands, moaning, “I know where we are. This is the Daedelum Maze.”
Tanvi shared an uncomprehending look with the others. “What’s the Daedelum Maze?” she asked when it was clear no one else would.
Pheelan pulled his hands down his face, dragging over the skin. “Overseer Ossiltree’s prison deep in the heart of the City. A place for traitors, murderers, fiends and the very worst criminals in all of Tendling.”
“And us,” Tanvi said softly.
Her eyes were drawn to the writing once again. You Deserve To Be Here. But if that was true, why couldn’t she remember? Was she fiend, murderer, criminal or worse – innocent? She didn’t know. She couldn’t remember. But if she wanted to escape, she was going to have to find out.
A.R. Cunningham’s You Deserve to Be Here plunges readers headfirst into a high-stakes, vividly constructed world where memory is a mystery and survival is a test of both character and will. From the opening lines, the narrative grips with atmospheric tension and cinematic detail, reminiscent of the early 2010s golden age of dystopian young adult—yet with sharp psychological insight and rich emotional texture.
The story follows sixteen-year-old Tanvi, who awakens in the Daedelum Maze, a magically fortified prison for the worst criminals in the realm—though like her companions, she has no memory of how she ended up there. With a diverse ensemble of characters, each drawn with surprising nuance, Cunningham deftly explores themes of identity, morality, and redemption. The found-family dynamic between Tanvi, the skittish mage Pheelan, sharp-tongued Larabel, brooding Roeger, and wary Niirah adds both tension and tenderness to their journey. Their clashing personalities and layered pasts provide fertile ground for emotional development and plot propulsion.
Cunningham’s prose is immersive and observant, seamlessly blending the fantastical with the visceral. Details are grounded—gravel beneath palms, the shimmer of magical walls, the bite of a forgotten memory—yet the world always feels just unfamiliar enough to maintain suspense. The writing invites the reader to experience all angles of the world. The amnesia trope is used to excellent effect, not merely as a plot device, but as a metaphor for the moral fog the characters must navigate: Do they deserve to be here? And who decides?
Though comparisons to The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner are brought to mind, You Deserve to Be Here forges its own path by leaning into emotional introspection over spectacle. It’s a story that evokes nostalgia for classic YA dystopias, while still feeling urgent and relevant in its themes of systemic power, self-forgiveness, and the fight for agency.
With magnetic characters, a compelling mystery, and evocative world-building, this novel announces Cunningham as a voice to watch in YA fantasy. Readers will finish the final page still questioning the nature of guilt, justice, and who gets to write the story of who we are.