Re: the YA, I can see that, although for me the book is more about healing and recovery after trauma and not centered around the transition between childhood to adulthood. Frex, my sense of Evanjalin is that there's very little of that going on until the last part of the book when she comes home, and I read that more as... I don't know. Reclaiming childhood, definitely. But mostly it's that the book feels a lot like the fantasy I read as a teen being published as fantasy (hahaha Shannara!), so it feels like the YA label is more a marketing decision? I.e. if fantasy were the hot genre right now, this fits in pretty well.

Ahahaha, have already read the next two, need to get brain together to post.