Comments on: What I’m looking for now

By: Kevin A. Lewis

Kevin A. Lewis — Fri, 11 Oct 2013 00:00:31 +0000

What you’re experiencing, Andrea, is the flameout end of a wave that stared about 7 years ago, when kids waking up and discovering that they are descended from Egyptian Gods and have a Great Mission To Fulfill, (or variations thereof) were a serious newsflash. Now, all the hunky shirtless Mormon werewolves have left the building, and nobody’s come up with a replacement that flies more than 15 feet from the signing party. John’s problem is more serious; the blog we all read in PW informs us that “realistic” fiction is now the benchmark, however, that’s usually interpeted as bleak, humorless, and depressing, and at the end of the day, there’s only room for one John Green out there. Nonentheless, DGLM inboxes are rapidly filling up with what I call Sick & Sad Lit, and most of our hosts probably realize that no matter how many Iron Chefs labor on it, a keopectate latte is still just a keopectate latte, and not likely to be something you’re going to sell on every street corner. Add to the mix the fact that a lot of gatekeepers consider humor to be a dangerous controlled substance that kids need to be protected from, and you’re pretty much painted into a corner. I’d love to help, but you guys have robojected that option out the door, so good luck with all that, as the redoubtable Mr. Seinfeld used to observe. I’ll be watching to see if anybody around here can find their way through this maze, so all the luck in the world to ya, eh, what?

By: Andrea

Andrea — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 10:38:10 +0000

Speaking solely as a reader of YA fantasy, I’m just desperate to find a novel that’s not trying too hard to be original and impress me with world-building, but instead offers some depth and great characters who stay with me after I’ve put down the book. Admittedly, I am nearly twice the age of the targeted age-group, but I’m having such a hard time finding YA fantasy novels whose characters (or even their names) I still remember a few days after finishing. And one of the reasons I prefer YA fantasy over adult fantasy is the focus on character development rather than an epic plot.

Where are the novels like Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, Garth Nix’s Abhorsen trilogy, Alison Croggon’s Pellinor books, or even Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain?

The last six YA fantasy novels I’ve read were all first books in a trilogy and none of them were memorable enough for me to want to read books 2 and 3. All of them made very obvious attempts to be original. All of them were traditionally published by big publishing houses.

I love fantasy and the potential of the genre, but I’ve almost lost hope that I’ll ever find another fantasy novel, YA or adult, that I can fall in love with. Recommendations welcome.

By: Kevin A. Lewis

Kevin A. Lewis — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 21:04:24 +0000

When I was working at Borders for 20 years or so, (glub, glub, women and children out of the way, please) we called stuff like WONDER and THE FAULT IN OUR STARS “castor oil books” because they were invariably bought by humorless adults who hope to arm-twist howling kids into reading them “for their own good”… Nonetheless, a sale is a sale, one supposes…