So lately I’ve had several book recommendations here and in other subreddits for novels or audiobooks that sounded great, but when I pursued them, I found these were young adult novels. Despite long discussion threads, no one mentioned this.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the occasional YA book. But it seems like something people should mention it is YA, like you might mention if something was softcore. It makes me wonder: Is this is not a big deal to people? Or do people not even realize these are YA?
The most recent was Red Rising, which was suggested as an audio book recommendation. One comment mentioned that they found this after looking for something like Game of Thrones . This is a fun book, and the audio narrator is great, but it is definitely YA and nothing like Game of Thrones, lol.
Anyway, just a thought…
To begin with YA is nothing but a marketing label used by publishers.
Also, Red Rising is very much not an YA series, even though it features young main characters. Specially not after the first book.
I was lead to believe the first book was YA, but it got darker later on, but it certainly wasn’t the case. It had a “teenagers in a hunger games” setting, sure, but that hardly makes it YA specially since the very origin of this set up is definitely not YA (Check out Battle Royale).
There’s no teen angst in the story, nor prominent love triangles and the highly stratified caste system is not some quirky metaphor to adolescence, it’s a system of oppression that draws more from the Handmaid’s Tale and 1984, than any toothless dystopian YA scifi that are hallmarks of the genre.
Red Rising book 1 may not be the author’s best book, but it’s still quite good nonetheless and it starts out exploring some darker themes from the get go. The MC lives on a planet where people need to pull their loved ones’ feet so that they can die fast when they’re hanged for the smallest slight against higher castes. I don’t see Divergent, Hunger Games or similar series going there at all, let alone right at the beginning for the series.