Discussion
Topic: Books
Why are most fantasy books classified as young adult? As someone age 65, I usually won't read them, unless recommended by someone who has read more adult fantasy. What is the criteria for adult vs young adult? Thank you
9 comments
Sarah Parker I think there is a lot of fantasy, particularly books by women authors, that gets erroneously labeled as YA. Maybe it’s because some people think of fantasy in general as less mature or elevated, I’m not sure. There does also seem to be an impression that if a book doesn’t have “mature content”, then it’s YA, even if it’s not actually categorized that way by publishers/sellers.
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Sarah Parker As for where the distinction is, there’s no hard and fast line, but I think generally, YA will have a teenage main cast (or at least protagonist), faster pacing, and accessible writing style. I agree with you that I often only go for a YA fantasy when it’s been recommended by other adult readers.
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Rose Honestly I feel like a lot of older fantasy would be classified as YA if it came out now, like the Shannara series, but they’re called just fantasy now because they’re older. I’d say a fantasy book will NOT get categorized as YA if it has at least one protagonist above the age of 20 OR it has many explicit scenes of s3x/torture OR if it has a male author and some kind of literary conceit (a literary conceit is not enough for a female author to not get categorized as YA tho, just my opinion).
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Ebru Yeah ...... but a lot of Sarah J. Maas' books are labelled YA, (I've only read one but) there seems like there's a decent amount of explicit stuff there. And The Poppy War has basically all characters below 20 (for most of the trilogy), and apparently that got marketed as YA, even though it has SO much on page violence and should be as far away from the YA section as possible.
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Rose @ebru_yayla I think ACOTAR is “supposed” to be labeled as adult or new adult and certain bookstores either don’t know or lump it in with throne of glass because they figure it’ll sell better that way. Same with the Poppy War, I think people assume it’s supposed to be YA but it’s technically not. Again I think the double standard wrt female authors plays a role here, as well as SJM in particular having a previous YA series.
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Impo55ibleGirl It seems like if you have a protagonist that is 20yo or below, it is advertised as ya. A good example is The Poppy Wars. The main character is young and attends school for part of the first book. But the subject matter is NOT a young readers' book. Then again The Hobbit is marked as an adult fantasy but it's perfect for kids/teens to read.
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Laury Walkey I think it's partially because many stories are "coming of age you are the chosen one" plot and this rarely happens to the mature adult. Also if there is a strong romance subplot or as someone else mentioned that the author is a younger woman then the book gets targeted for a younger audience. People seem to think fantasy is for the young with open imaginations and that as we age we grow away from that ability. Some do but some don't. I think that makes us the lucky ones. ;-)
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Pamela Weinstein Absolutely. I've read so much mystery, drama & crime, that I'm over it. I grew into fantasy not away from it. It is hard to find the really good writers without recommendations.
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David Rachau It seems to be a marketing tool used by publishers to be sure there's a built in audience. Brandon Sanderson said in a video on his YouTube channel that one of his sci-fi series was only labeled YA in the USA, and wasn't in the rest of the world. Even he didn't know why.
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Sarah Brown I would say also a lot of authors who write for an adult audience have been resistant to genre labelling (eg Margaret Atwood insisting she doesn't write sci-fi) so genre fiction for adults winds up categorized as literary and fantasy fans can't find it.
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Marsh it's all a marketing scheme. i solve what to read by opening a book to a random page and seeing if i like the writing style or dialogue. since 90% of everything is terrible anyway, it eliminates the middleman.
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Marsh fantasy books i like that you might also like: the elemental logic series by laurie marks, goblin emperor by katherine addison, heroes of the valley (which does contain teenage protagonists but its written like a tribute to ancient epic poetry and with enough humor that i love it), guards guards by terry pratchett, winter tides and deep roots, the lamb will slaughter the lion, the hike by drew magary, spinning silver by naomi novik, and anita by keith roberts
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Marsh @marsh_6055 and if you consider fire-children fantasy, there's 'nothing to see here' which is very low fantasy and very well-written :)
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Abbz It used to be that Ya didn’t have any explicit scenes but now a days there is explicit content in YA books (it’s sad). People say that now YA means that the protagonist is a young adults. I think that most authors and publishers deem their books as YA is because it hits a wider range of people. Adults read YA and teens read YA, if they say it’s for adults then less people will read it. For fantasy I think it is because most of the time the main character is a teen or YA and has to ->
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Abbz “Find themselves”. But I think most fantasy books that are put as YA are fit for any age. Some good books are, Narnia, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Mistborn, Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit.
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Ebru Part of the YA books with explicit stuff I wonder comes from the fact that there's more adult readers of YA books then it potentially might have been. (At least part of the discussion I've heard)
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