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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

Book Review: Gemina (The Illuminae Files_02) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, illustrated by Marie Lu

Gemina (The Illuminae Files_02) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, illustrated by Marie Lu

Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2016

ISBN-13: 978-0553499155

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

Gemina is the sequel to Illuminae. Illuminae is framed by a trial in which a dossier of information is submitted as part of an investigation into a megacorporation’s criminal activity. The dossier begins by telling a story about a commando attack on an illegal civilian mining colony owned by the Wallace Ulyanov Corporation (WUC) on Kerenza IV, a planet out in the middle of nowhere, by a competing megacorporation, BeiTech. A Terran Authority ship, the Alexander, that arrived in response to a distress call, and two other ships, the Hypatia and the Copernicus, escaped with many of the refugees on board. However, their ability to communicate and to travel with any speed was handicapped by damage to the ships, and especially the incredibly complex AI, called AIDAN. When AIDAN was rebooted, its perceptions of what was best for the ships caused serious damage and destruction, and the death of many of the refugees. At the end of Illuminae, the Alexander and the Copernicus have both been destroyed through a combination of a bioweapon Beitech released before the residents of the colony fled and AIDAN’s frequently homicidal choices, and the Lincoln has also been destroyed. The primary characters from that book are teenagers Kady and Ezra. Kady is an anti-authoritarian hacker genius who is able to set up a partnership with AIDAN. Ezra is her ex-boyfriend, who has been drafted as a fighter pilot.

Gemina picks up with Hypatia limping through space toward a jump point, a wormhole that would allow them to get to a jump station, Heimdall, which sits in the midst of a number of jump points and makes transit from one place to another through the jump points faster and easier. They’re desperately hoping that Heimdall is picking up their radio transmissions and coming to the rescue. Unfortunately, a BeiTech spy is embedded in the communications staff at Heimdall, and has been destroying any transmissions, so no one on Heimdall has any idea that any ship is on the way, or even that anything happened on Kerenza IV. A transmission did, however, make it through from the crippled BeiTech ship, the Lincoln,  alerting top executive Leanne Frobisher that BeiTech’s coverup isn’t as complete as she thought it was.

On Heimdall, Hanna Donnelly, the station commander’s daughter, is chatting up her drug dealer , Nik Malikov, while she prepares to make a splash at a Terra Day celebration she will be attending with her handsome, romantic, boyfriend, Jackson. Hanna may look like a fashionable, spoiled, and very privileged girl, but she’s also highly trained in strategy and martial arts (this apparently is how she spends quality time with her dad). Nik, in the meantime, has also been contacted by someone who wants to move a box of contraband into the station. A member of a family famous for their criminal dealings, he lives on the station without documentation so he can’t be easily tracked. The box arrives late, and Nik leaves to sell Hanna “dust,” the designer drug of the moment, so he’s not there when the box opens to reveal a heavily armed commando team hired by BeiTech to prevent the escape of the Hypatia, that starts its reign of terror on the station by killing almost every other member of Nik’s family.

The commandos storm the atrium, where the majority of Heimdall’s residents are celebrating Terra Day, and kill Hanna’s father. Hanna, waiting for Nik to show up, is saved because he’s late getting to her. Of all the people on Heimdall, they are the only two who have the combined luck and skill to combat the killers that have overtaken the station. It’s a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, complicated by the emotions, perceptions, and decisions of people who are not what they seem. There are stone-cold killers, spies, hackers, lovers, literal bloodsucking monsters (lanima, the source of “dust”), and evil corporate executives; there are betrayals, grief, confusion, anger, and fear; there is weird science, love, and hope in the face of horror.

Hanna and Nik, along with Nik’s hacker cousin Ella, discover the plan to eliminate the Hypatia and eventually the Heimdall, get through to the Hypatia, and with the help of Kady Grant and the remains of AIDAN on the Hypatia, manage to save many lives on the Heimdall, nearly destroy reality, save the universe, and escape through the wormhole to rendezvous with the Hypatia. Unfortunately, the wormhole is destroyed in the process, leaving the survivors of both Kerenza IV and the Heimdall far from home, and with limited options.

As with the first book, Gemina’s storytelling is unconventional, involving screenshots of messages and chats, emails, transcripts of video clips (with commentary) text designed as part of illustrations, showing movement or space, soliloquies by AIDAN, and artwork from Hanna’s journal (the journal artwork was created by Marie Lu) Page design is such an essential part of the way the book is written that I don’t think the story could be told effectively in a more traditional way. I highly recommend reading a hardcover edition: paperback won’t have the same detail and Kindle and audiobook cannot possibly do this justice.

Gemina suffers from an issue that affects many “middle” books in trilogies: while it doesn’t end in the middle of a sentence, it does end rather suddenly, leaving the reader with an unsatisfactory feeling of “wait, what happens next?” It’s also a very different book from Illuminae, much more of a horror/science fiction thriller. Hanna, Nik, and Ella are all very strong characters who developed considerably beyond their original stereotypical presentations during the story, and they’re up against the commandos, with few adults to monitor them, instead of the considerably more operatic first book with its mass murders, evacuations, space battles, military crackdowns, bioweapon-infected cannibals, and homicidal AI, in which Kady and Ezra are very much treated as teens in need of supervision. Yet the ending seemed anticlimactic, more written to lead into the third book than to finish the second. I enjoyed meeting Hanna, Nik, and especially snarky, tough, Ella (it’s great to see a disabled character portrayed as multidimensional and valued as a person) and am interested in seeing how the interactions of the people from the Heimdall and those of Kerenza IV play out in volume 3. Recommended.

 

Posted on January 25, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Illuminae (The Illuminae Files: 01) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Illuminae (The Illuminae Files: 01) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2015

ISBN-13: 978-0553499117

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

 

Ezra thought his day had started out badly when his hacker girlfriend Kady dumped him,  but then invading warships from a competing megacorporation destroyed his home, an illegal mining colony on Kerenza IV. Two science ships, the Hypatia and the Copernicus, survived to take on refugees, as did a single warship that happened to be within distance of Kerenza’s SOS, the Alexander.  The Alexander managed to destroy three of the four attacking ships and severely wound the fourth– the ships escaped but were all badly damaged, and are now on the run from the remaining warship, the Lincoln. 

Trapped on separate ships, Ezra and Kady must find a way back to working together and trusting each other as they navigate around fellow colonists who have been infected by a bioweapon that turns them into violent, paranoid cannibals; collaborate with a paranoid AI too damaged to fight off a warship without help; convince station management that they are on the right track; and somehow, save each other and as many other colonists as they can.

The first half of the book feels like miltary science fiction, with some teenage angst in the mix, and an ever-increasing sense of dread… in the second half, the AI, resurrected after it was significantly damaged and deemed dangerous, takes over a chunk of the narrative, and it is terrifying.

The story is not a traditional narrative. Much of it is told through secret IM’s, letters, transcripts of recordings, emails, and company documents. It’s framed as the evidence supporting the secret attack on Kerenza IV, presented to the United Terran Authority by a mystery organization called the Illuminae, incriminating the company responsible.  There are also pages devoted to the thoughts of the AI, who seems to become more reflective as the story continues and it develops a relationship with Kady. The design of the book is incredible. It is worth picking up just to see how the words, illustrations, maps, diagrams, code, and backgrounds fit together. Pages look like you would expect them to if you were actually reading someone’s emails and documents, and pieces of the story that take place outside the ships are designed to tell the story not just in words but visually and actively through what I would describe as word paintings. There are even “countdown” pages that tell you how much time has passed and how much there is left before the Lincoln reaches the Alexander and attacks, creating a strong sense of urgency.

As long as it is, and as oddly as the narrative turns from the story focused mainly on Ezra and Kady and the human side of grief and disaster to Kady’s attempts to convert the paranoid AI from a course of violence against the people remaining in the fleet to using its power to save them from the Lincoln, this is a book I couldn’t put down. The emotions are intense, the settings are vivid, the terrors feel absolutely real. Although I found this in a middle school library, it certainly isn’t limited to the enjoyment of that audience– older teens and adults can also enjoy this book. Highly recommended.

 

Posted on November 14, 2018 by , Reply