Quick Thoughts - The Promise of YA

So I read YA. Not all the time, but I do reviews for YA and middle grade novels and I figured I would take a week to think about YA a bit. The largest reason for that is probably because I've been thinking about my favorite novels I've read this year, which basically means novels that I've given five stars to on Goodreads. Which means The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson, Karen Memroy by Elizabeth Bear, and Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older. It surprised me a little that two of those books are YA. And I wondered what drew me to those books specifically and what draws me to YA more in general. 

First, I suppose, I should say that I don't have an exhaustive history with YA. I mean, I like YA books but it's not like I have a whole lot of experience with it. I was an asshole when I was younger, and wanted people to know that I read "serious" fantasy and science fiction, which is just terrible. I have no excuse outside my youth and privilege, so I will say simply that I was asshole and I was wrong. I got into reviewing YA as an adult sideways. I was reviewing graphic novels at a site but the person who ran the graphic novel reviews left and I was sort of left out of the new team and was bummed but so it goes. Except that there was a graphic novel for children that the YA and middle grade division of the site wanted me to review and I did that and it transitioned into me working for her doing reviews there on a more permanent basis.

So hurrah, that basically establishes that I'm probably a strange creature, who used to look down my nose at YA before very much getting into it. And the thing that I like about YA, or at least the YA that I love, is that it deals with the idea of generations and the idea of younger people having power and agency and not fucking everything up. Perhaps because I'm a Millennial, which means that I have to see things written by older people decrying my generation as lazy and worthless. Despite the fact that Millennials work more, with more education, for less pay, when things cost more than they ever have. So I have a bit of a bitterness about stories steeped in pessimism about the future. Millennials did not fuck the economy, did not fuck the environment, did not fuck foreign policy. No, those were handled for us and we are just accepted to deal with it and…wait, this is about YA…probably should cut that rant short.

What I mean to say is that YA captures a sense of optimism about the future. Or, if not a optimism about the future, an optimism about the people who will live in it. They identify the tendency of older generations to want to take a big ole dump on the younger people. Parents treating their children like property and like idiots. Society treating younger people like they are all spoiled idiots. What is GamerGate or the Puppies if not reactions to younger people actually showing their preferences, proving that younger people are more informed and more progressive than ever, that what people want is not the same old boy and his dog stories set in space where diversity is having some green people. What people want is stories of love that doesn't fall into line with binary boundaries, that don't follow conventions just because that's what's always been done. What people want is new stories, and what I love about my favorite YA is that it fully believes that it is possible to have agency and power in the face of resistant establishments.

Perhaps what I like, people might argue, in between shouts to get off their lawn, is the fantasy that youth has anything to offer. Because yes, young does not mean wise, and experience is an excellent teacher. But things are more possible to young people, which means that they are in an incredibly good place mentally to find creative solutions to problems people just accept as given. And that's what YA is good for. It kicks readers in the butt. They are fun and optimistic and manage to be just as creative and tightly plotted as any non-YA book. And there is something alive about them, alive and ready to take on the world. And I find something irresistible about that, something joyous and righteous and fuck-yeah!-inducing.

So YA. I really like it. If you're looking for some amazingly great books, definitely go and read The Summer Prince and Shadowshaper. While you're at it, Love is the Drug (also by Alaya Dawn Johnson), is also a very good novel. Me, my adventure with YA is ongoing, and leaves me hungry for more. So excuse me, but I'm off to start reading. Thanks for stopping by!

All the best,

Charles Payseur

The Monthly Round Is Up!!!

That's right, everyone's favorite monthly taster's guide to speculative fiction is up right now over at Nerds of  Feather, Flock Together.

Go on now, go read it. Then be back tomorrow for some weekend Quick Thoughts.

Thanks for reading!

Quick Sips - The Dark #9

This month's The Dark Magazine certain lives up to the name, featuring four stories all with aspects steeped in darkness. From a town with a dark secret to a world where spiders lurk under every tongue to misunderstood man to a story people tell themselves to feel better about their situation, the stories all manage to weave the darkness into something beautiful, something almost luminous. So onward to the reviews!

Art by Michael MacRae

Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online August 2015

This month's Flash Fiction Online features three stories, all of which focus on twisted visions of the future. The editorial calls these summer stories, and I can't really disagree, as the stories show humid swamps of form cities, bugs that eat light, and birds devouring groves of apples. Climate change, mad science, and horror all mingle in these stories, which provide a nice, if mostly science fictional, reading experience. But perhaps I should just get to the reviews!

Art by Dario Bijelac

Quick Sips - Lackington's #7 - Skins

Seven stories make the latest issue of Lackington's a rather weighty experience, especially with how each challenges and provokes, providing visions tinged with equal parts darkness and hope. Which, of course, means that I quite enjoyed myself while reading, exploring some of the depths the stories had to offer. The theme this issue was Skins, and I think most of the stories do make good use of the idea, the theme. Many feature changing skins, changing form, and it's a powerful metaphor and image. So let's get to the reviews!

Art by Kat Weaver

Quick Sips - Tor.com July 2015

Tor.com this month certain tends toward the dark, with pretty much all but of its five stories inky and disturbing. Of course, there's really nothing wrong with that, and the stories do provide a wide range of approaches to darkness, to suffering. And there is a much lighter superhero story thrown in to bring a bit of lightness and fun into the mix. Really these stories seem to be about dealing with the past, with past trauma in most of the stories but the past more generally. A dance unfinished, the looming ghosts of past experiments, the forgotten nightmares of a time before humans, the origin of a superhero steeped in loss, and the tragic childhood of a woman from a very messed up family, the past refuses to stay buried in these stories. So let's get to the reviews!

Art by Jeffrey Alan Love

Quick Thoughts - Spoilers

The time has come, I feel, to talk about spoilers. Now, I'm not sure everyone else's opinion on the place of spoilers in reviewing. I myself have some mixed opinions, because I understand that reviews play different parts for different people. For me, I normally try to avoid spoilers (try being vaguely honest), wanting to let the reader discover for themselves the endings of things, discover the twists and turns. Where possible I try to leave things ambiguous and open. And this is because I assume that there are people out there that are reading reviews to figure out what they want to read. It's something that I've certainly done, though a part of me doesn't much care when reading a review in this way if there are spoilers or not. And sometimes, honestly, I want spoilers even if I haven't read the work.

I shall explain. Sometimes, when I go looking for reviews on a story or a novel, I'm looking for certain ideas or keywords. If this is a book that I'm thinking of getting for myself, it's sort of like looking at the back, looking for some overview of what's there. In that case, I want the book spoiled in certain regards. Accidental pregnancy, rape, or other triggering content is probably not going to be on the back cover. But I can be faily certain that if a book or story has some content that is going to offend me or make it an unpleasant reading experience, that someone else has already discovered that and mentioned it in a review. Not that it's always so stated, and sometimes the most positive of reviews can steer me right the fuck away from a book. Because if the review is glowing and praising certain things that I have issues with, then I know that I want to stay away from it. So when I review part of me is trying to play to that, trying to perhaps warn people of things that they might find unpalatable. Which is different for me than it is for others, so it means that sometimes I do indeed include spoilers so that people know what they're getting into with a story.

Now, there is another part of me, too, that uses reviewing for completely selfish reasons. Namely, to get down my thoughts on a story, my own reaction to the writing so that I can organize my thoughts about what I just read. And I'm not sure how much that requires the spoilers, except that sometimes I want to react directly to something that happens, and often it's to something that is important to the story, that is a spoiler. I can think of many recent stories I've reviewed where this has been the case. I just can't really hold myself back from reacting to certain things because they get to me. They make me smile or cringe or cry or piss me off and I want to talk about them. I want to figure out my own thoughts about them and that means I have to spoil them. Now, as some have probably noticed, when I am conscious of spoiling things I have been trying now to include the warning in parentheses so that people can skip or whatnot. Do people skip? I'm not really sure, but I feel that it's the polite thing to do in case there are people who really don't want the stories spoiled.

Spoilers are fascinating, though. Part of me, the part that is a writer and not a reviewer, wonders if there is something to be said about spoilers being basically unfair to artists. That there is an argument that spoiling a story or novel in a review would be tantamount to basically copyright infringement or, if not that, something morally comparable. And there is a part of me that sees the point there, that what you don't really want is someone going around revealing things that artists took a long time to create, and to reveal it in a way that doesn't even capture the actual work. Like if I were to describe a painting in some detail and then someone would read the review and judge the picture for it. Which, obviously, they haven't seen the work, so should they be judging it? The answer that I invariably come back with is, yeah, pretty much. I feel that the idea of "fairness," which a loaded term, is used in these situations, and in situations similar, and I feel like it doesn't really apply.

Take the Puppies situation (please). I have seen reviews of the stories that were included in the Puppies slates. These reviews made use of spoilers rather heavily. I read the reviews and I am not going to read the stories. And I have judged the stories, and know that, if I were voting for the Hugos, which I would be voting for (or which I would not be, as the case may be). I feel that people would brand this as not fair of either me or the reviewers who spoiled these stories. Because of the reviews, I feel absolutely no guilt about giving the stories a pass. None at all. I feel like I have experienced enough vicariously through the reviewer, all without having to buy anything or read anything or give traffic to anything. I find this completely okay. Because really, people shouldn't need to be slapped in the face in order to know they don't want to be slapped. It's not "only fair." And writing something does not entitle you to readers. Nor to "unbiased reactions." I'm fully on side Reader here, and that's as someone who has been poorly reviewed.

I guess, in the end, I know that I will continue to use spoilers. I believe in them, in many ways. Without them, what, I'm left having to tiptoe around something I might not want to tiptoe around. Yes, if there's a really good twist I will probably try to avoid spilling the beans, but I might not be able to contain myself. And if I want to perhaps warn people of what they're getting into, I want to be able to do that rather explicitly, so that if they feel they want to have a go at the text anyway it's not a mystery. There are, for example, many people who like "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" by Neil Gaiman. And the writing is solid and the characters fairly relatable (shy, sad, lonely). The premise is insteresting, crashing a party where the people turn out to be aliens visiting earth for a short stop. I sort of have to spoil that if I want to mention my issues with the ending. The main character, who was there with his friend (who is an ass), has a moment at the end where it's obvious that the friend wanted to have sex with one of the aliens there until he found out she wasn't really a woman. The language used is very evocative of trans tropes that are...not good at all. It's a trope that's played for laughs in the story and that...well, made me rather uncomfortable and made me not like the story. And to talk about that part of the story, I had to spoil that the people at the party are aliens. I had to wreck the punchline, because in my mind that punchline was unsettling. Now, that's an old story and most people who want to read it probably have already, but people are free to take my assessment of it and either avoid it or go seek it out, either to see how their opinions might differ from mine or just because they want to make up their own mind. My spoiler certainly hasn't hurt the story. It remains the story. But I needed to reveal it both to try and do my best at reviewing for others who might be reading my reviews and expect honesty and for myself, because what the hell would I be doing with my life going around writing fake reviews? The only way these reviews are valuable to me is by actually prompting me to examine how I react to stories and why.

And I should probably stop myself before I go on any further on something that most people probably find dull as rocks. Anyway, thanks for reading!

All the best,

Charles Payseur