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…

  • altcastle@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Red rising only touches YA in that the opening seems like it will be. Society in colors by specialty, oppression, a “school” for the elite kids to train. Then it is not at all. It’s adult sci-fi.

    Bad stuff happens in YA, but do people slowly beat each other to death against concrete or hack off limbs and describe blood spurting all over in much detail or sodomize them?

    There’s six books now and books 5/6 are both amazing and incredibly violent wars. Like a known character just suddenly being their lower torso as a rail gun shell takes them off at the waist and a character watches the legs tip over.

    • 1willprobablydelete@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Yep, exactly. It’s a weird series, because I would definitely call the first one YA, but not the rest of the series. When I recommend it to people I usually point that out as a disclaimer.

    • sergibby@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      I’ve been talking about Red Rising to all of my friends recently, and I’ve been describing it as not YA, but an adult dystopian science fiction by an author who grew up during the YA explosion of the 2000’s. I think calling it YA would be even more misleading than not mentioning it at all, but something about the way it is written takes me back to the countless YA series I read in my teens and early twenties. It’s worth noting that I’m halfway through book two and that feeling is slowly fading, so maybe it was just the battle royale/school with houses/other tropes that contributed to that familiarity.