Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Well, it's not as if YA books have to carry a seal or something. Or that they didn't exist until some marketting drone started targetting everything at that demographic.
|
You might be better off calling it "juvenile" then because "YA" is, basically, a rather specific marketing category.
If Faith had been the only point-of-view protagonist, I'd be inclined to agree that it'd fit under the classification. As it is, this is a book with mostly adult protagonist POV (first part of book one is mostly Tom, the scientist, Steve, random cop; second part is mostly Steve, the US military) doing adult stuff - it's the sort of book that would both be suitable for and appeal to a lot of younger readers, but it's not a Young Adult book.
There is a difference.
I've read probably several hundred recent YA books in the last several years, and actually, I can't recall a single one that even
had an adult POV at all. It's
all teenager protagonists, and only, and I mean only, their POV. They can have several teen protagonists, some of them even have a few adult secondary characters, but books currently written and marketed as YA (and yes, the "marketing" is important here) aren't written primarily with adult protagonists doing adult stuff, with maybe a kid or two thrown in.
It's perhaps unfair, but it is a term that has come to have a rather specific meaning in practice in the last five years or so. Genres and classifications exist to give readers some idea what to expect - e.g. one can't really go around calling a book that has a lot of romance in it and an unhappy ending "romance", because as genres go, "romance" has a very different meaning than "love story". (Well, of course one can, but I wouldn't recommend a book like that as "romance" in a public board because some poor readers expecting a genre romance, with a happy ever after, will read it and be bitterly disappointed and angry.)
What's wrong with calling it "suitable for teens" anyway? There are a
lot more books around that are both well suited for and appealing to teens that are not either primarily written for nor specifically targeted at teen readers than there are specifically YA books (i.e. books that are well suited for and appealing also to adults but that are primarily written for and marketed to teens).
And this book, to me, marketing aside, did not come off as one specifically and primarily written for teens. Written for adults
and teens; written in a way, knowingly, that younger readers would
also have a character and references to relate to, absolutely; written
primarily for teens - no.
Anyway, I apologise if I inadvertently offended you by calling it YA-suitable, not YA as a classification. It was meant to be a throwaway comment, there to give potential readers who are looking for "strictly YA" stuff some idea that it doesn't actually fit neatly into that particular marketing category.
To switch the topic, I've already got the eARC of the second book, and I'm eagerly looking forward to reading it. In spite of some of my misgivings, I did end up enjoying it a great deal - it's not just over-the-top action but there was plenty of reasonable, well thought-out logic to it.