Like you, I've improved my English by reading a lot of science fiction and fantasy. That results in a weird vocabulary -- I realized once that I knew half a dozen synonyms for "wizard", but had no idea of the English word for that thing with wheels you push around when transporting a baby
(The word is "stroller", someone told me.)
Lots of good suggestions here. Here are some more. I've added the first paragraphs of one of their books so you can get an idea of the language (in spoiler tags, so the post doesn't get too huge):
Sarah Rees Brennan
Spoiler:
In Other Lands
So far magic school was total rubbish.
Elliot sat on the fence bisecting two fields and brooded tragically over his wrongs.
He had been plucked from geography class, one of his most interesting classes, to take some kind of scholarship test out in the wild. Elliot and three other kids from his class had been packed into a van by their harassed-looking French teacher and driven outside the city. Elliot objected because after an hour in a moving vehicle he would be violently sick. The other kids objected because after an hour in a moving vehicle they would be violently sick of Elliot.
Elliot ignored the other kids and hung his head out of the window. In a disdainful way.
Then they arrived at their destination, which could only be described as a classic example of a “random field in Devon, England.” Much like any other random field in England.
“Why are we in a random field?” Elliot demanded.
“I will thump you,” promised Desmond Dobbs. “Zip it.”
“I will not be silenced,” said Elliot.
He would not be silenced, but he was feeling unwell and being thumped usually made him feel worse, so he stood a little way off from the others and observed their surroundings.
The random field boasted a stone wall so high Elliot could not see over the top, and a woman wearing extremely odd clothing who appeared to be waiting for them. She and their French teacher had a quiet conference, and as Elliot watched them he saw money change hands.
“Excuse me, did anyone else see that?” Elliot asked. “I don’t wish to alarm anyone, but get alarmed, because I think our French teacher just sold us!”
“They haven’t sold us,” said Ashley Sinclair. “Nobody would want to buy you.”
That did silence Elliot. It seemed so indisputably true.
The woman in odd clothing “tested” him by asking him if he could see a wall standing in the middle of a field. When he told her, “Obviously, because it’s a wall. Walls tend to be obvious,” she had pointed out the other kids blithely walking through the wall as if it was not there, and told him that he was one of the chosen few with the sight.
“Are you telling me that I have magical powers?” Elliot had asked, excited for a moment, and then added: “Because I can’t walk through walls? That doesn’t seem right.”
Shannon Hale
Spoiler:
Princess Academy
Miri woke to the sleepy bleating of a goat. The world was as dark as eyes closed, but perhaps the goats could smell dawn seeping through the cracks in the house’s stone walls. Though still half asleep, she was aware of the late autumn chill hovering just outside her blanket, and she wanted to curl up tighter and sleep like a bear through frost and night and day.
Then she remembered the traders, kicked off her blanket, and sat up. Her father believed today was the day their wagons would squeeze up the mountain pass and rumble into the village. This time of year, all the villagers felt the rush for the last trading of the season, to hurry and square off a few more linder blocks and make that much more to trade, that much more to eat during the snow-locked months. Miri longed to help.
Wincing at the rustle of her pea-pod mattress, Miri stood and stepped carefully over her pa and older sister, Marda, asleep on their pallets. For a week she had harboured an anxious hope to run to the quarry today and be already at work when her pa arrived. Perhaps then he might not send her away.
Seanan McGuire
Spoiler:
Every Heart a Doorway
THE GIRLS WERE NEVER present for the entrance interviews. Only their parents, their guardians, their confused siblings, who wanted so much to help them but didn’t know how. It would have been too hard on the prospective students to sit there and listen as the people they loved most in all the world—all this world, at least—dismissed their memories as delusions, their experiences as fantasy, their lives as some intractable illness.
What’s more, it would have damaged their ability to trust the school if their first experience of Eleanor had been seeing her dressed in respectable grays and lilacs, with her hair styled just so, like the kind of stolid elderly aunt who only really existed in children’s stories. The real Eleanor was nothing like that. Hearing the things she said would have only made it worse, as she sat there and explained, so earnestly, so sincerely, that her school would help to cure the things that had gone wrong in the minds of all those little lost lambs. She could take the broken children and make them whole again.
She was lying, of course, but there was no way for her potential students to know that. So she demanded that she meet with their legal guardians in private, and she sold her bill of goods with the focus and skill of a born con artist. If those guardians had ever come together to compare notes, they would have found that her script was well-practiced and honed like the weapon that it was.
Tamora Pierce
Spoiler:
Alanna
“That is my decision. We need not discuss it,” said the man at the desk. He was already looking at a book. His two children left the room, closing the door behind them.
“He doesn’t want us around,” the boy muttered. “He doesn’t care what we want.”
“We know that,” was the girl’s answer. “He doesn’t care about anything, except his books and scrolls.”
The boy hit the wall. “I don’t want to be a knight! I want to be a great sorcerer! I want to slay demons and walk with the gods—”
“D’you think I want to be a lady?” his sister asked. “‘Walk slowly, Alanna,’” she said primly. “‘Sit still, Alanna. Shoulders back, Alanna.’ As if that’s all I can do with myself!.” She paced the floor. “There has to be another way.”
The boy watched the girl. Thom and Alanna of Trebond were twins, both with red hair and purple eyes. The only difference between them—as far as most people could tell—was the length of their hair. In face and body shape, dressed alike, they would have looked alike.
“Face it,” Thom told Alanna. “Tomorrow you leave for the convent, and I go to the palace. That’s it.”
“Why do you get all the fun?” she complained. “I’ll have to learn sewing and dancing. You’ll study tilting, fencing—”
“D’you think I like that stuff?” he yelled. “I hate falling down and whacking at things! You’re the one who likes it, not me!”
She grinned. “You should’ve been Alanna. They always teach the girls magic—” The thought hit her so suddenly that she gasped. “Thom. That’s it!”