The Ultimate Fantasy Series Ranking

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JY Yang

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-08-29

Neon Yang, who published earlier work under the name JY Yang, is a Singaporean writer born in 1982 or 1983 who holds an MFA from the University of East Anglia and attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2013. Yang's background in molecular biology and journalism informs a recurring fascination in their fiction with the human body as a site of storytelling and transformation. They began publishing short fiction in 2012 in major venues including Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons. Yang is best known for the Tensorate series, four interconnected novellas published by Tor.com between 2017 and 2019—The Black Tides of Heaven, The Red Threads of Fortune, The Descent of Monsters, and The Ascent to Godhood—a work of queer Asian science fantasy that Yang has described as "silkpunk," blending speculative technology with richly imagined Asian-inspired worldbuilding, twin protagonists, and fluid, non-binary approaches to gender within its magic system. The Tensorate novellas earned numerous award finalist placements across the Hugo, Locus, Nebula, World Fantasy, Lambda Literary, British Fantasy, and Kitschie Awards, and The Black Tides of Heaven was later named among Time magazine's list of the 100 best fantasy books of all time. Yang's debut novel, The Genesis of Misery (2022), launched a new series, the Nullvoid Chronicles, reimagining the story of Joan of Arc as a mecha-driven space opera. Yang legally changed their name to Neon in 2020.

Universe(s)

The Tensorate Series

  • Core Canon books: 4
  • Current rank: #758 in the official ranking
  • Weighted average: 3.77
  • Award recognitions: 4 nomination

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