Home » Posts tagged "The Enemy"

Help a Reader Out: A Book List for Teenage Boys

Stephanie Ellis, a participant on Monster Librarian’s Facebook page, noted that right now there is a lot of great YA horror with girls as protagonists or major characters, but she’s having trouble finding any with boys as protagonists (writers, take note). I personally think it is lovely that we’re seeing more girls take on major roles in horror fiction, but in looking at this list by Kelly Jensen of YA horror fiction for the second half of 2019, 28 of the books have women as authors or editors (there is one anthology, slanted significantly toward women authors) and just three have men as authors. So many women writers getting published and lots of girls and women as protagonists or major characters is a great problem to have… unless you are looking specifically for YA horror with boys as protagonists and major characters. There are a lot of boys who are reluctant readers and an engaging YA read will grab them. Of course we shouldn’t all expect all books to be mirrors of our experiences, but there are now many more options for boys to read stories that showcase girls as protagonists and point-of-view characters, so there are more windows to look through, and doors to step through, in YA horror than ever before.  A note: I’d like to see alternatives to traditional depictions of masculinity in future YA horror. It makes for some pretty great writing when you see it!

A few things about teens who seek out horror. In a very small 2007 study, Sharon McKool discovered that there are many kids who jump straight from reading Goosebumps to reading Stephen King (this included her own son).  Based on my even earlier experience as a college student in the 1990s, I had more than one classmate who first engaged in reading when he first discovered Stephen King, and thought he was the greatest writer ever. A teenage boy was the first to hand me Anne Rice. My brother, not a reader, was gripped by In Cold Blood. YA is not a stopping point for these boys.

But many boys aren’t ready to make that jump and take the path that leads through YA fiction, and that’s awesome, because there are some great books available for them. There are even outstanding authors who first wrote for adults who have now also written YA horror, like Jonathan Maberry, Jeff Strand, and Steven Wedel (author of Murdered by Human Wolves, written for an adult audience, as well as co-author with Carrie Jones of one of the books Jensen mentioned as coming out later this year). These authors have the opportunity to introduce the adult horror genre to their young adult audiences craving more. However, since the current crop of upcoming YA horror fiction doesn’t seem to offer much in the way of boys as protagonists or major characters, here are a few older titles you can turn to. They are very different in tone, level of gore, age appropriateness, writing style, type of creature, and quality, so you can’t just hand the list over to any teenage boy and say “pick one.” But it is a starting place for making recommendations to the right kids. We’ve reviewed many, but not all, of these books. If the book was published before 2014, you’ll need to search the original MonsterLibrarian.com.com website to find it, but it should be pretty simple to find most of these reviewed elsewhere as well.

 

A Bad Day for Voodoo by Jeff Strand (2013) This Bram Stoker nominee is both funny and violent. Strand has written other books for younger readers that aren’t as violent, and comic horror for adults that can get very gory.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (2011). This outstanding book should be in every collection. It is powerful and wrenching, and gorgeously illustrated.

Anna Dressed in Blood (2 book series): Anna Dressed in Blood (2011), Girl of Nightmares (2012) by Kendare Blake. Anna Dressed in Blood is consistently recommended as a “book to read” on recommendation lists for YA horror.

Escape from Furnace (5 book series): Lockdown (2009), Solitary (2010), Death Sentence (2011), Fugitives (2012), Execution (2012)  by Alexander Gordon Smith. This action-packed dystopian series about a brutal underground prison for delinquent teenagers has some really difficult torture and body horror scenarios.

Five Nights at Freddy’s (2 book series): The Silver Eyes (2016), The Twisted Ones (2017) by Scott Cawthorn and Kira Breed-Wrisely. These are based on the popular video game Five Nights at Freddy’s. 

Gone (8 book series): Gone (2008), Hunger (2009), Lies (2010), Plague (2011), Fear (2012), Light (2013),  Monster (2017), Villain (2018) by Michael Grant

Heap House (The Iremonger Trilogy, #1) by Edward Carey (2014)

Lockwood & Co. ( 5 book series): The Screaming Staircase (2013), The Whispering Skull (2014), The Hollow Boy (2015), The Creeping Shadow (2016), The Empty Grave (2017)  by Jonathan Stroud. These will probably appeal more to younger teens and are slanted toward mystery.

Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children (6 book series): Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2011), Hollow City (2014), Library of Souls (2015), Map of Days (2018), The Conference of the Birds (upcoming)  by Ransom Riggs. The use of vintage photographs and documents really sets these apart. A movie was made of the first book in 2016.

Peeps by Scott Westerfeld (2005)

Red Eye (10 book series): Flesh and Blood, Bad Bones, Savage Island, and Whiteout all have boys as protagonists. Tony Jones has done a summary of the 10 books in this UK series here.

Rot & Ruin (4 book series) : Rot & Ruin (2010), Dust & Decay (2011), Flesh & Bone (2012), Fire & Ash (2013). by Jonathan Maberry. This Stoker Award-winning series is essential. Bits & Pieces (2015) collects shorter pieces that take place in the same fictional world, and Broken Lands (2018) is the first book in a follow-up series.

Rotters by Daniel Kraus (2011)

Skeleton Creek (5 book series):  Skeleton Creek (2009), Ghost in the Machine (2009), The Crossbones (2010), The Raven (2011), The Phantom Room (2014) by Patrick Carman. Skeleton Creek is an interactive series that directs readers to YouTube videos and websites intended to give the story a feeling of realism.

Slasher Girls & Monster Boys edited by April Genevieve Tucholke (2015). This is on HWA’s “Summer Scares” list for 2019.

The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein (2 book series): This Dark Endeavor and Such Wicked Intent by Kenneth Oppel (reprinted 2012) I fangirl these ones! Kenneth Oppel is a very talented writer.

The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group by Catherine Jinks (2019)

The Devil’s Engine (3 book series): Hellraisers (2015), Hellfighters (2016), Hellwalkers (2017)  by Alexander Gordon Smith

The Enemy (7 book series): The Enemy (2010), The Dead (2011), The Fear (2012),  The Sacrifice (2013), The Fallen (2014), The Hunted (2015), The End (2017) by Charlie Higson. This post-apocalyptic series begins after nearly all the adults have been turned into cannabilistic zombies, and the children and teens are banding together in gangs, in hopes of surviving.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (2009). This Newbery Award-winning book is outstanding and covers a boy’s life from young child to young man. The artwork by Dave McKean is startling and effective.

The Graveyard Book (graphic novel) by Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell (2018)

The Illuminae Files: Illuminae (2015), Gemina (2016), and Obsidio (2018) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. These look more intimidating than they actually are. The stories are set up as a series of chat logs, emails, video transcriptions, photos, sketches, maps, and impressive double page illustrations, so even though the books are substantial they don’t need to be intimidating. They have a futuristic science-fiction setting.

The Monstrumologist (4 book series): The Monstrumologist, The Curse of the Wendigo, The Isle of Blood, The Final Descent by Rick Yancey. Will is the 12 year old apprentice to a “monstrumologist,” both scientist and monster-slayer, writing of his experiences. Set in the Victorian era, the language can be difficult and flowery.  Although The Monstrumologist is a Printz Honor book, it is not for everyone. It will appeal most to readers with advanced vocabulary and a very strong stomach for gore and body horror.

The Thief of Always by Clive Barker (1992,  reissued 2014). Clive Barker takes a different tone in this story of a house where it’s always a holiday. Many, many horror fans and writers have mentioned this as a gateway title to adult horror.

The Thief of Always (graphic novel) by Clive Barker, adapted by Kris Obrisko, art by Gabriel Hernandez (2010)

Thirsty by M.T. Anderson (1997, reissued 2010) Published in the days when YA horror was a rare treat, nobody had heard of that Harry Potter guy, and Amelia Atwater-Rhodes was a big deal, Thirsty remains memorable to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on June 12, 2019 by , Reply

6 YA Horror Series You Could Be Reading

I was over at Dread Central and they had posted a list of 5 horror series you should be reading, and it’s an interesting list. Inspirational, even. So I’m going to thank them for the idea and offer you a list myself of YA series you should read, if you haven’t already. There are so many more, it’s hard to limit it to just a few. Enjoy! If you have other ideas, I’d love to know them!

 

Product Details

Bad Girls Don’t Die by Katie Alender (Book 1: Bad Girls Don’t Die, Book 2: From Bad to Cursed, Book 3: As Dead As It).

Creepy ghostly possession is now apparently a “thing” in the horror genre, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, but Katie Alender was way ahead of the trend in this series about a girl whose younger sister is possessed by a malignant ghost.

 

 

The Enemy by Charlie Higson (Book 1: The Enemy, Book 2: The Dead, Book 3: The Fear, Book 4: The Sacrifice, Book 5: The Fallen, Book 6: The Hunted)
A plague hits London, transforming nearly all adults into zombies. Children and teens are on their own, fighting for survival in post-apocalyptic world. Higson, somewhat controversially, claimed to be writing for boys, but he has strong female characters as well. The books in this series are fast paced and action packed, and there’s plenty of gore, but not at the expense of character development.

 

 

Product Details

Zom-B by Darren Shan (13 book series).

Darren Shan gets hardcore in Zom–B. B, the protagonist, is not a nice person. B comes from an abusive environment that reeks of racist attitudes, and has not problem passing that on to weaker victims. The first half of the first book sets up B’s background, character, and moral dilemmas, but the second half has all the graphic gore and zombie action fans of zombie novels could desire. There is a surprising twist at the end of the first book that will change your perception of B, and Shan handles it well.
Product Details

The Haunting of Sunshine Girl by Paige McKenzie and Alyssa Sheinmel. (Book 2: The Awakening of Sunshine Girl)

This series is based on a YouTube webisode series, Sunshine Girl, created by Paige McKenzie. After Sunshine Griffith moves from sunny Texas to gloomy Washington, she discovers she is living in a haunted house, inhabited by a malicious spirit. Fast paced, intense, and incredibly creepy.

 

 

 Asylum by Madeleine Roux. (Book 2: Catacomb, Book 3: Sanctum).

 

This is a creepy, photo-illustrated series with a design similar to that of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. It begins by introducing students in a summer college prep program that just happend to take place in a renovated mental asylum. Nothing could go wrong there, right? The photos give the story a disturbing sort of realism. As a digression, Ms. Roux also is an alumna of my own alma mater, although I’ve never met her personally.

 

 

Lockdown: Escape From Furnace by Alexander Gordon Smith. (Book 2: Solitary, Book 3: Death Sentence, Book 4: Fugitives, Book 5: Execution)

 

In a dystopian future where there has been a massive backlash against teen crime, 14-year old Alex, caught committing a burglary, is sentenced to time in the underground prison Furnace. Violent, rife with gang activities, and patrolled by monstrous creatures, Furnace is a terrifying place to try to survive, and Alex decides to make the attempt to escape. Gripping and fast-paced, Smith takes you on a breathless tour of the next thing to hell.

 

Posted on December 13, 2015 by , Reply

Charlie Higson Guest Post: The Cosy Apocalypse

Charlie Higson is the author of the YA zombie novel The Enemy and its just-released prequel The Dead, which was released on June 14 in hardcover here in the United States (if you live in the UK, it’s been out there for many months already). Here at MonsterLibrarian.com we are lucky enough to be part of a blog tour for The Dead, and I’d like to share with you what Charlie Higson wrote for us in a guest post on the “cosy apocalypse” and YA fiction. The part I really enjoyed is this:

As the father of three boys I try to encourage my children’s wild urges (within reason of course), and help them find harmless outlets for their fascination with violence. Boys want to grab spears and paint their faces and run around shouting. We all stifle those urges as we grow older, we repress ourselves, so is it any wonder we fantasise about things blowing up and falling apart?

Why would anyone read horror fiction, dystopian fiction, fiction about the end of the world? These are questions I’m asked all the time (frequently by relatives), and it’s great to see a writer as talented as Charlie Higson put it right out there on the page.  And now I’ll stop writing, and you can read it all for yourself below. It is absolutely worth it to take the time.

Charlie Higson Guest Post: The ‘Cosy Apocalypse’

 

I’m always getting very erudite e-mails from kids in America talking about ‘dystopian fiction’. It used to make me think that, to be bandying around such highfaluting phrases, American kids must somehow be a lot more intellectual than British kids, but then I found out that ‘dystopian fiction’ is being taught in many US schools.

And there is no shortage of dystopian fiction on the bookshelves, from The Hunger Games, to Maze Runner, Gone, Matched… and of course my own Enemy series. The description ‘Dystopian Fiction’ makes it all sound terribly heavy and gloomy and pessimistic, and I prefer another phrase that has also been bandied around a great deal recently – ‘The Cosy Apocalypse’. Because, let’s face it, the appeal of dystopian fiction is not that we‘re all terrified of the Apocalypse, it’s not that we’re dreading the subsequent process of running around some barren wasteland filled with the remnants and relics of our society, picking up weapons and blasting away at each other. The appeal is that we would all secretly love it to happen. Come on, it’d be FUN!

It’s like all those American survivalists hiding out in the wilderness, armed to the teeth and priming their mantraps. They claim they’re merely getting ready in case the worst happens and society falls apart. But we all know that every night they pray that it will happen. They would like nothing better. They want society to fall apart, so that they can go out and shoot people just like in the wild west, or Mad Max, or all those violent computer games. The Worst? No, it’d be THE BEST!

We love the idea of the apocalypse. People wondered recently why so many idiots followed that crackpot American preacher who predicted the end of the world. It’s simple. They really, really wanted it to happen. Apocalypse stories are at the heart of every major religion. The Greeks had a series of golden ages that all ended badly, Vikings had Ragnarok, the Bible is full of them, from the flood, to the plagues to Revelations. Our endless appetite for movies like 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow show that we like nothing more than a good old-fashioned apocalypse.

There is a strong self-destructive (or even just destructive streak) in human beings. The more we are forced into cities and complex societies, rubbing up against each other, having to obey a complex set of written and unwritten rules and laws, having to pay our taxes, and keep up with the latest trends, and get our kids through school and negotiate dinner parties, moody partners, tricky relatives and troublesome neighbours, the more we have to worry about the environment, the global financial crisis, how computers and technology are taking over our lives… the more we want to throw all our clothes off and run down the street dressed only in a leather loin cloth, screaming. We just want things to be SIMPLER. If only a nice cosy apocalypse would come along and sort everything out, wipe the slate clean, we could start again.

I saw a fantastic production of Lord Of The Flies in London last week at the beautiful open-air theatre in Regents Park. With its tall trees and dense shrubbery surrounding the stage area it was a magical and very apt setting for the play, enhanced by a set that included half a wrecked aeroplane. It was interesting to watch William Golding’s story unfold. His original version of the book started with a nuclear explosion and was about the end of the world, and the message that we are teetering on the brink of disaster comes across very strongly. We human beings are messing everything up. The theme of the book/play is the split between sensible Ralph and Piggy and their friends trying to impose some sense of law and order, and Jack and his choirboys descending into savagery. I know whose side we’re supposed to be on, nice Ralph and gentle Piggy, but I must say Jack’s lot looked like they were having a lot more fun. I think William Golding hated children. He was fairly uninterested in his own and as a teacher in a boy’s school he was much more interested in being a writer than teaching his pupils, who I reckon intimidated him. He was freaked out by the boys’ wild urges. As the father of three boys I try to encourage my children’s wild urges (within reason of course), and help them find harmless outlets for their fascination with violence. Boys want to grab spears and paint their faces and run around shouting. We all stifle those urges as we grow older, we repress ourselves, so is it any wonder we fantasise about things blowing up and falling apart?

That is the appeal of dystopian fiction. A simpler life in a nice blasted wasteland somewhere. In all these cosy apocalypse stories 99% of the world’s population is wiped out, thus giving a lot more room and freedom to the 1% who survive, and in our fantasies we are part of that 1%, not part of the 99% who have been turned into compost. We will make it through and find ourselves a bazooka and we will be all right. That’s the cosy part. We won’t all die, and those of us who survive can rebuild a better world.

My Enemy series started with a fantasy that I had when I was a kid – wouldn’t it be fantastic if all the adults in the world simply disappeared? I wrote a couple of stories along those lines when I was younger and even wrote a long experimental (unreadable) science fiction book in which characters end up living in the Natural History Museum in London (just as they do in my new series). It’s always been a fantasy of mine to be allowed to go into all those places that are closed off to us and play. To go into the museums and dress up in the clothes, and use the weapons, and drive the vehicles. To live in Buckingham Palace, or the Tower of London. I figured it was a good background for a kids’ series. All I had to do was work out how to get rid of the pesky adult in such a way that I would leave the structures intact (a quandary that weapons designers have been working on for some time now!) A disease that only affects people over a certain age was the obvious solution.

My series is only superficially grim and pessimistic; at its heart it is a fantasy, a glorious optimistic piece of escapism (in which, admittedly, a lot of nice kids do get killed and eaten). I think kids like to read about coping in a world without adults (which is surely the appeal of boarding school books like Harry Potter). My books have been compared to Lord of the Flies but I think in the end my message is very different. Unlike Golding, I happen to like kids. I like teenagers. I like their wildness and sense of life and I feel that deep down most of them are fundamentally decent. I believe that, left to cope for themselves (and we’ve seen this happen with street kids in the Third World) children are actually pretty good at looking after themselves and don’t revert to mindless savagery. That’s what I want to get across in my books. I want to empower kids.

That was the starting point for the series, but I then decided I wanted to liven things up a little. So I didn’t kill off all the adults. I kept some as basic cannibal zombies. I seem to have caught a wave of the undead, and added my germs to the zombie plague that is taking over Western culture and the minds of our young people. In my next blog I will look at the appeal of zombies and try and figure out why they are everywhere at the moment.

Posted on June 25, 2011 by , 1 comment