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Originally Posted by pegasi&prefects
I want to chime in with the "School for Good and Evil" series by Soman Chainan. Ostensibly Middle Grade, but enthralling for grown ups as well, with lots of action, mild horror and humour, so perfect for an 11 year old. And they have the magical boarding school thing going on.
(I'm going to assume he isn't put off by female protagonists, I know these books have a large following among boys.)
I'm going to second the Dragonlance rec, at least for Chronicles. Now, they make me wince, but at twelve my entire inner fantasy life took place in those books. There are sexual references, though, if that is an issue.
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I suspect I'm being over-circumspect, but hard to go wrong, in that direction, if you think about it. When he's older, great, but...
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As a parent, I find the consent issues concerning. As a twelve year old girl, they really upset me, although I couldn't quite articulate why, only that they made me feel bad.
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I read Dragonflight, second-hand, in...the mid 60's, I think. I was in my teens, and I can tell you, it perturbed me when I "got" it. First, it perturbed me as a woman (and thus, obviously, rider of queens)...it was more pronounced with Moreta, and the (can't remember his name) rider she was "stuck" with. I mean, Lessa got the rider she wanted (man, that sentence just doesn't come out right), essentially, but Moreta was, IIRC, saddled (this sentence keeps getting worse) with someone she loathed.
And then, when I was a bit older, and realized what it meant for the riders of green dragons, well, as a mid-teen, back then, it shocked me. I wasn't a sophisticated kid when I read them, not the kid I would be in a few short years. I don't know where she (McCaffrey) was
really going with it--it certainly wasn't a women's lib issue, god knows--and it was disturbing to me across the board. Hey, if a green rider was gay, terrific, but if not, it was right up there, to me, with the "taking" of the queen rider. Both were pretty abhorrent to me.
It's a shame, because I think that she did an amazing job of world-building and storytelling, otherwise. Feminism issues aside (I mean, in addition to the whole "lack of sexual consent" item for either gender), which I try to ignore, just as I would for any book written by someone raised in a vastly different time/age.
Hitch