Recently Read
I wish I had time to do a full review. As you can guess from how stale the site has grown, things is busy. Still…
If you haven’t checked out Peter Straub’s Lost Boy, Lost Girl 
, you’re missing out. Ghost story meets serial killer with paranormal romance thrown in. Orson Scott Card did this–badly and minus the romance–with Lost Boys. Since LBLG is getting the awards where Card’s LB got the pan, I hope Mr. Card is taking it gracefully. Lost Boy, Lost Girl should be put on the top of your stack of summer reading.
Next up, Garth Nix’s Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr
is the second book in his Abhorsen trilogy. Yes, this is a YA series. Still, you have to love a world in which working in the library is one of the most dangerous and most important jobs you can have. Garth Nix’s treatment of magic is the best that I’ve seen in a while and the quality of writing is up there with Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass / The Subtle Knife / The Amber Spyglass). The conclusion of the series, Abhorsen 
leaves me pondering the functional differences between YA and so-called “adult” fiction. Why is the Abhorsen trilogy YA but Dragonlance is somehow regarded as more mature. (Your comments are, as always, appreciated.)
I’m not particularly a fan of militaristic SF so it came as a shock to find myself enjoying Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon
and Broken Angels
. Takeshi Kovacs is an ex-UN envoy turned private eye. Forget the private eye. Takeshi has a tendency to make lots of things go splat when the going gets tough. But if you can take Aud Torvingen, Tekeshi won’t be any more difficult. Falling solidly in the realm of digital noir, the Takeshi Kovacs stories are action packed adventures with people not technology at the forefront of the narrative. Technology is presented in an exciting and innovative manner, but is important mostly in how it will affect people and relationships. The future of military tech in the Takeshi Kovacs novels is much better thought out than David Weber’s warmed over Napoleonic campaigns.
June 27th, 2004 at 8:19 pm
Hi Alan,
The YA question (what’s Young Adult and what’s not) is a good one. There was a recent Locus interview — darned if I can’t remember with whom — where the interviewed author on the cover had some thoughtful comments on the topic. If there’s any interest, I can try to dig it out and post up a few insights to serve as the centerpeice of a discussion.
But what I really wanted to discuss is Nix’s trilogy (which I love). I could have sworn that Sabrael (sic), Lirael and Abhorsen were the first of Nix’s works that were marketed as specifically not YA.
So unless I’m wrong (which I frequently am), they wouldn’t be the best centerpiece for a discussion.
Maybe we should try:
- Hobbit vs. LOTR
- The Pullman series, which you highlighted
- Chronicles of Narnia
- Harry Potter
Others?
June 30th, 2004 at 1:56 am
I wish I knew more about the genesis of Garth Nix’s Abhorsen Trilogy. I’ve seen it advertised in outlets that are normally oriented towards an adult market such as the LocusOnline website. I know they have an adult cover planned but it’s not available at Amazon.com yet.
When I read the books, I find the writing to be of high quality, the situations engaging and the characters delightful. The last two–I need to dig up the first one–were thoroughly enjoyable reads. But there’s a quality to them that would still classify them as YA in my mind. I struggle to understand why that is. It’s clearly not quality. So what is it?
These blog entries age pretty quickly. Once they’ve scrolled off the front page, they might as well never have existed. Since this is a topic that I’ve been interested in and expect to continue to be interested in, I started a forum on it.
Meet you there for coffee?
Best regards,
Alan