@cupiscent been meaning to ask: is there a reason you've been reading YA fantasy if it's not really your thing?
— Elizabeth Morgan (@SaysElizabeth) December 20, 2013
Elizabeth asks the best questions.
I managed a twitter response, though sometimes I feel so constrained by the 140 character limit that I can practically feel the “I will burst free!” song and dance number welling up in my throat. But honestly, this deserves more verbiage and certainly more thought.
The longer answer is more along the lines of: when I say “YA is not my thing” I’m sort of being lazy. What I really mean to encapsulate with that pithy dismissal is: there are many things that I regularly see cropping up in books that are identified as YA that dissatisfy me as storytelling habits or mechanisms. Because I do keep seeing them over and over, in books that are often lauded as excellent examples of the genre, I tend to assume that they are “the way it’s done” for YA. But there are YA-identified books that I love! (More on this later.) So clearly, those things that often dissatisfy me aren’t compulsory. (Possibly, one of the reasons I’m reading quite a bit of YA at the moment is to build up my sample size and help me whittle down the specifics of the things that dissatisfy me, so I can more accurately identify and avoid them.)
But also, as I said in my twitter response, a big element of why I keep trying YA despite dissatisfaction is ideas. There seem to be a whole lot of outrageous, amazing, wild-eyed, fascinating ideas in YA novels, something that I feel is not quite so common in spec fic for growed-ups. I’m basing this on reflections on my browsing in stores – I pick up a book, I read the blurb, sometimes the first page or two, and either a lightbulb of interest goes off (ding! and it goes on the to-read list) or it goes back on the shelf. YA books get a lot of dings because there’s often a Big Idea in either character or setting that’s sitting right there in the blurb. Adult fantasy blurbs are often a bit of a same-old trudge. Here are two (often male) characters who will be set at odds. Here’s an old (male) warrior, struggling with Kids Today. Here’s a King, and here are his Troubles. Here’s a Thief. Here’s an Epic Fate and Forces of Darkness.
Don’t get me wrong. I have a lot of fun with characters at odds in epic fates, and I love old warriors struggling with what the years have wrought. I enjoy the depths and complexities of the worlds – but to be honest, it can be tricky to tell from the blurb and the first few pages whether this is going to be a novel with Ideas, or just a same-old Tolkien-euro-clone with concepts lifted straight from Tough Guide to Fantasyland (not naming any names). Often the Ideas are buried beneath Life, and it can be rewarding to see them unearthed through the narrative. But y’know what? Sometimes it’s fun when the Ideas are life, and are the narrative. There’s a lot of excitement to “OH MY GOSH, CONCEPT!” and I’m having trouble thinking of an adult novel that made me do that – Three Parts Dead, of course, but others? Um. Hmm.
(I admit, I’m hoping to hear about some oh-my-gosh-concept reads…)
