What Irony is This?

[kriadydragon]

So when I finally got into fantasy books in my teen years, it was adult fantasy books I gravitated toward (DragonLance, Barbara Hambly, Piers Anthony). Yet as I grew older, I found myself wandering more and more toward young adult fantasy. Just last week I went to the bookstore, got two young adult fantasies and only one adult fantasy (Night Watch, by Terry Prachett, because you recommended it, bratfarrar , and it's about darn time I got around to reading it.)

The transition didn't hit me until now, when I was thinking about a particular author whose books irritated the heck out of me, yet he is recommended quite often by other people. I had given his books a chance around my college years, got to the middle of the first book and couldn't take it any more.

Thinking about that author and those books just now, it got me wondering if, perhaps, I would have liked them better had I gotten to them early on - i.e. in my teens rather than my twenties. I loved Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman in my teen years, but in my college years I just couldn't get into their Deathgate series.

And yet, as an adult, it's the young adult book section that I hover around the most. I think a part of the reason is that I can trust young adult books (well, fantasy books) not to get the drop on me with sex scenes (I have yet to read a young adult fantasy that did that to me). But I think the transition didn't happen until it felt like every adult fantasy book I picked up was a rehash of the same old, same old - dark lords, Medieval worlds, elves/dwarves/men, young man/woman who is the "chosen one" and politics, politics, politics.

Don't get me wrong, I love sword and sorcery fantasies. But I'd reached a point where I was ready for something different, and young adult fantasies offered something different. I still like the occasional adult fantasy, but it's young adult fantasies I've been reading the most.

The further irony is that my own writing changed the same way. I was all for writing sword and sorcery medieval-type worlds in my teen years, (and some of those ideas I would like to one day write). But now my leanings are more toward urban fantasy, worlds that aren't so "medieval" or worlds that feel more alien than sword and sorcery. 

And, yet, very few of my stories are geared toward young adults :/
 

Comments

[sholio]

I think there's more creativity in YA fantasy, in general. I read a little of pretty much everything, and I've read a few really creative and interesting adult fantasy novels over the last few years (like China Mieville's "The City and the City"), but it's a little surprising to me how flat and formulaic most of it is. YA authors seem to be a lot more willing to play with different ideas -- magic crossing over into the real world (without falling into the genre cliches of urban fantasy), retellings of myths, blendings of genres, just a lot of really creative stuff. And the plotting is much tighter. YA authors don't expect a reader to sit through six chapters of infodumps and meandering before getting into the plot. Good authors do that in general, but it seems like mainstream fantasy is bogging down horribly under a bad case of book bloat. Most of the fantasy novels I've read lately would have been much stronger, more interesting books if they'd had a third of the verbiage and the first few chapters edited out.

I'm not always in the mood for YA, because it can be pretty simplistic and sometimes I'm in a mood for something deeper and more complicated. But I wish more writers of so-called fiction for adults would take some cues from YA authors ... and I also yearn for a return to the slim SF/fantasy of the 60s and 70s rather than the giant tomes that are in vogue these days.

[crashbarrier.livejournal.com]

"pulp" fiction is not what it used to be.. it seems if you can't prop up the bed when the castor goes with a single volume of a fighting fantasy then its not worth printing these days.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

"read a little of pretty much everything, and I've read a few really creative and interesting adult fantasy novels over the last few years (like China Mieville's "The City and the City"), but it's a little surprising to me how flat and formulaic most of it is."

And I don't get that. If we get such a plethora of creativity in fantasy for young adult novels, why not more so in adult novels? Unless, like TV, it's all about going with has sold well before, or what seems to be the most popular... or something. I don't know, I just find it odd.

"Most of the fantasy novels I've read lately would have been much stronger, more interesting books if they'd had a third of the verbiage and the first few chapters edited out."

Yes, that. After a time, it seemed like that was all I was running into: books where the first couple of chapters were so heavy on the info dump that my patience ran out and I couldn't finish them. For that reason, and because I kept running into such stories, it made me incredibly wary about what I read. I want to read more adult fantasies - as you said, YA novels can get simplistic and I want something more - but most of the time I can't bring myself to try any. Right now, the only adult fantasy I'm deeply into is the Dresden Files.

[crashbarrier.livejournal.com]

I seriously can't get nough dresden and alera... i don't know what to badger Jim Butcher for first:D

[crashbarrier.livejournal.com]

I don't think I ever truely transitioned between child, YA and adult fiction what happened was I just read anything that I could, and once I finished reading the child section of the library (which at anything up to 12 books a week was quite quickly) I discovered the sci-fi and fantasy section in the adult area of the library which was refreshed faster and so I could get the much craved "new" books I wanted. I think i had burned through all teh big names in sci-fi and fantasy before I was 14..

The deathgate cycle is just depressive... believe me I have read pretty much all their binary stuff and that series is still teh one that takes the most work to read because its so depressing....so very depressing.. I feel they had "issues" going on when that series was concieved:D

My present collection is seriously eclectic in terms of age range. I have stuff by Anthony Horowitz (mostly alex rider stuff and the Power of the fiver series - both of them) Douglas Hill, Colsec series, last legionary series (trying to get hold of his work is seriously hard work but is worth it in the long run) I often find that stories geared towards the YA end of the market tend to be a lot more direct and to the point when it comes to story telling the faffing about you tend to find lurking in adult books is kept to a minimum.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

I think I would have remained more diverse had I not kept running into adult fantasies that took forever to get to the good parts. As Friendshipper pointed out, a lot of adult fantasies really love to pour on the info dumps within the first couple of chapters. And I don't care how good a book is later on, I can't sit through that (and I cross my fingers that my own stories aren't the same way :S). I ended up turning to young adult fantasies as they offered what I wanted - books that jumped right into the plot rather than bog me down with too much info.

I tried getting into Deathgate, but I was annoyed that it was taking so long to introduce the main character. I hate that. My dad, who's read all the books, told me that it gets better later on but I just don't have the patience to wait. I'm incredibly picky, and it doesn't take much for me to lose interest in a book. That doesn't mean the book was bad, just really not my cup of tea.

And what is with all these adult fantasies trying to be impossibly long? I take one look at those fat books and I cringe. Needless to say, they are the ones I steer away from when book shopping.

[crashbarrier.livejournal.com]

Deathgate does get better by about book three.. when it starts toactually get into th estory.. but it takes so long to get to the point...

I blame the LOTR movies.. when they got made everyone went "ooooo epics.." and since then everyhting has to be an epic..

mind you th elikes of JRR Martin, Patrick Rothfuss and Christopher Poulini don't help... even if their stories are extremely compelling an I must read them....:D:D:D

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think it was happening long before the movies. People try to emulate what they really like. A lot of what turned me away from adult fantasy was all the stories trying to be like LOTRs - always with elves, dwarves, men. Any story that had an elf, dwarf and man configuration, I immediately put that story down.

Then there's all the info dumping, as I said above. It's what turned me off of Poulini's books: all that history he kept packing into his stories. I love world-building, but there is such a thing as over doing it and even Tolkein wasn't as heavy-handed about it as some author's are today.

[crashbarrier.livejournal.com]

I don't know about Tolkien, in regards to info dumping.. although I do agree that he did do it far more subtley than most modern writers. I think because instead of trying to pack it all into the "story" he wrote about the other stuff in appendicies which allowed you to read up on it at your own pace rather than having to swim through it to get to the story.

Any story that had an elf, dwarf and man configuration

you know it sounds a lot like the lead into a joke...

and elf a man and a dwarf walked into a bar......:D:D:D

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Ah, appendices. Gotta love 'em :D It's what I like to use when I have a ton of information that I can't fit into the story. It's a sore temptation to try to pack everything you feel is need-to-know into the plot - usually as soon as possible.

"and elf a man and a dwarf walked into a bar......:D:D:D"

Heee :D

[flingslass.livejournal.com]

It the innocence of the stories. It would explain why I'm getting all my Georgette Heyer and Marion Chesney's off the bookcase and rereading them. I seem to be swinging back to historical romances where the oofty magoofty (it's an Australian term :D) is a minor part of the plot. Lynn Kurland wrote a book called This Is All I Ask and there's no sex in it. They start the intimate parts and then the next chapter starts. I found it absolutely wonderful!

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Definitely. The chance of running into a detailed sex scene makes me incredibly hesitant about giving some adult fantasy books a try. Personally, I'd rather not have any kind of sex in a book, but if it's fade to black stuff, I'm okay with it. But detailed scenes will make me stop reading.

Which might have been the case with the Dresden files, but the books with the detailed sex scene I borrowed from a friend, who had the scene covered up by post-it notes. Very helpful, and funny because he dad had "rewrote" the scene on the post-its ("He bowed to her across the room." "They shared a soda." etc. It was hilarious.)

[flingslass.livejournal.com]

*snort* I'd love to read that version :D