Julie C Dao Books in Order

Julie C. Dao is a Vietnamese American author who writes fantasy for teens and middle-grade readers. She was born in upstate New York and now lives in New England, but her stories travel much farther, into cursed forests, royal courts, virtual game worlds, and haunted carnivals.

She started young. At nine, Dao wrote and illustrated a homemade novel about herself and two friends entering a magical world through a living-room television. She even tried to sell copies to classmates. The plan did not exactly take off, but the urge to make stories clearly stuck.

Dao kept writing through school, then stepped away from it in her late teens when a writing career felt too uncertain. She studied medicine in college before deciding that blood and needles were not for her. By day, she later worked in science news and research. By night, she returned to fiction.

She kept coming back to stories.

In her early twenties, Dao began writing seriously again. She drafted several manuscripts, learned the practical side of querying agents and publishers, and found an agent in 2015. Her debut, Forest of a Thousand Lanterns, arrived in 2017 and introduced readers to Xifeng, a young woman whose dream of becoming empress comes with a frightening pull toward dark magic.

That novel launched the Rise of the Empress world. Kingdom of the Blazing Phoenix shifts focus to Princess Jade, who must challenge Xifeng’s rule, while Song of the Crimson Flower follows Lan and Bao on a curse-breaking journey shaped by regret, love, and magic. Readers who enjoy fairy-tale bones underneath a more dangerous fantasy story will find plenty to dig into.

Fantasy has been the through line.

Dao also writes for younger readers. Broken Wish opens the multi-author Mirror quartet with a family curse, a magical mirror, and a girl learning what her strange visions mean. Her Team Chu books follow siblings Clip and Sadie Chu, whose competitive energy pulls them and their friends into adventures involving laser tag, a fantasy competition, and a Halloween carnival mystery.

Across these books, Dao often writes characters facing a hard choice between the easy path and the right one. Her heroes can be ambitious, stubborn, funny, scared, or all four at once. Whether the setting is an empire in trouble or a noisy family outing, she makes room for friendship, sibling tension, and the work of learning to trust yourself.