7 YA Series Adults Will Enjoy With Their Kids

As host of SFFWRTCHT, I am exposed to authors from all different publishers, genres and styles, and recently have been getting a chance to see more and more Young Adult books. As a non-regular reader of YA, I was hesitant. Will I relate to this? Is this for me? Is it going to be a bunch of teen angst and drama? Instead, so far, I have found very interesting, well developed real people as characters with interesting plots and stories to go with. Since I often get exposed to books before they take off, here are 7 YA reads I recommend to readers of all ages. In fact, adults, enjoy them with your kids if you dare!

Darwen Arkwright 1 - Hartley1) Darwen Arkwright by A.J. Hartley — Admittedly marketed as Middle Grade, this series has enough to it to appeal far beyond. It has a set up and characters which remind me of Harry Potter, but it’s very unique. The British protagonist enrolls in a new school in the U.S. and finds a door to a fantasy dimension that winds up involving him in plots and schemes by monsters and magic to take over the world.  Entertaining, with great worldbuilding, this would be a worthy follow up for Potter fans.

 

Flash Point _ Kress2) Flash Point by Nancy Kress — A standalone by a top writer, this compelling story has a teen cast in a near future reality TV show where producers create events to get a reaction by surprising their cast, but things get far more dangerous and complicated than anyone expected, and you’ll find the journey as compelling and fascinating as I did.

 

 

Jumpers by Gould3) Jumper by Steven Gould — Admittedly, these are hits, but I just recently read Impulse, the third, after missing the middle book, and it was amazing. You can read them as standalones or as a series, but they tell the story of David Rice and his wife and daughter, hunted for their gift of Jumping through time and space to locations they can remember in various ways, this series is compelling and interesting with real situations and characters interwoven with fantastic elements. Forget the movie, Jumper. Whether you liked it or not, this is the original canon and well worth the read.

Fair Coin - Myers4) Coin Series by EC Myers — PYR sent me Fair Coin to interview the author and it was a real page turner. The story of a boy who finds he has a coin with the power to time travel, it unfolds like a mystery-thriller and keeps you guessing to the end. The three central characters are well drawn and appear in varied versions as the protagonist travels. The story of the coin and their lives turns out far more complicated and surprising than expected.

 

Lightbringer5) Lightbringer Series by K.D. McEntire — I’ve read all three of these, and, full disclosure, the author is a friend. But this is just interesting urban fantasy about a young girl who discovers, after her mother’s death, that she can send spirits to eternal rest or destroy them, depending on circumstances, and finds herself hunted and chased by them as a result, turning her world upside down. Interesting world building, great characters. Darker, but still hopeful and well worth the read.

Starters - Price6) Starters and Enders by Lissa Price — Lissa sent me a copy when she was booked on a World Con panel I was moderating and this one knocked my socks off. I had no idea what to expect but it was one of my favorite reads of 2012. The sequel, Enders, is in the works and I guarantee it’ll be among your favorite reads too! The story of a time when youth is undervalued, with society run by older, Enders, who survived an epidemic, a young girl finds herself renting her body as a vacation body for older people, only to discover the company she works for is part of a larger, evil plot and her life is on the line. Lightning pacing, great characters, a real page turner.

Lady Of Devices - Adina7) Magnificent Devices by Shelley Adina — This is a fun, yet short, series of YA Steampunk adventures set in Victorian England about a girl coming of age and striving to defy mores and make her own way in life after her father’s suicide and family bankruptcy. The setup may sound depressing, but the character is so delightful you’ll quickly move on and enjoy the action, adventure, well drawn characters and great use of London settings.

Those are some great reads you might want to discover with kids, for what it’s worth… Meanwhile, I’d love to hear about your favorites in comments.

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Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the editor of Blue Shift Magazine and an author and editor of adult and children’s speculative fiction. His debut novel, The Worker Prince (2011) received Honorable Mention on Barnes & Noble Book Club’s Year’s Best Science Fiction Releases for 2011. A sequel The Returning followed in 2012 and The Exodus will appear in 2013, completing the space opera Saga Of Davi Rhii. His first children’s books, 102 More Hilarious Dinosaur Jokes For Kids (ebook only) and Abraham Lincoln: Dinosaur Hunter- Land Of Legends from Delabarre Publishing.  His short stories have appeared in magazines, anthologies and online. He edited the anthology Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 (2012) and is working on Beyond The Sun for Fairwood Press (July 2013), headlined by Robert Silverberg, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mike Resnick and Nancy Kress, and Raygun Chronicles: Space Opera For a New Age for Every Day Publishing (November 2013). He hosts #sffwrtcht (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writer’s Chat) Wednesdays at 9 pm ET on Twitter and is an affiliate member of the SFWA.

Guest Post: The Importance Of World-building by Mary Sutton

purpleToday, I have the pleasure of hosting Mary Sutton, whose YA fantasy debut chapter book I edited for Delabarre Publishing. As a software technical writer, Mary has been making her living with words for over almost 20 years. Power Play is her first published fiction work. She is a member of Pennwriters and is the incoming secretary for her local chapter of Sisters in Crime. Find her online at marysuttonauthor.com. Here are her thoughts on world-building:

The Importance of World-building

by Mary Sutton

One of the most important things in fiction is that activity known as “world-building.” Most people associate this with fantasy fiction, but you have to do it no matter what kind of fiction you write. “World-building” is where you draw the world in which your characters live. This world can be completely fictional or set in the “real world.”

World-building is a tricky exercise. If you use the real world, as in your story is set in New York, you have to get the details right. This is anything from the names of any famous streets or buildings, to basic geography and history of the locale, to the “feel” of the world. For example, New York is a busy place. People talk fast, walk fast, and drive fast (well, when they aren’t stuck in traffic). It would not be believable if you wrote a story where the “city that never sleeps,” slept.

Fantasy worlds have their own challenges. A lot of people think fantasy and science fiction give the author free rein to make up whatever she wants. Well, that’s sort of true. Your world still has to make “sense,” it has to have a certain degree of believability. You may decide to create a science fiction world that is devoid of gravity, but you better spend some time thinking through things as simple as “how do objects stay in one place” or “how do people go to the bathroom” or your readers, who do have certain expectations of basic physics, aren’t going to find your story “believable make-believe.”

For Hero’s Sword, I had to create two worlds. First, I had to create the “real-life” world of middle school. Fortunately, a lot of things haven’t changed since I was in eighth grade, some thirty-odd years ago. There are still cliques; still the kids on the “outside,” and kids still have those seemingly impossible crushes. I was also fortunate in that I have a first-hand view into today’s middle school through my kids. So it wasn’t hard to build Jaycee’s school world. Between memories and observation I got a very good feel for what I was trying to do.

Slightly more challenging was making sure my characters felt like they belonged to this world. The vocabulary and speech of the characters that inhabited that middle-school world had to be right. It’s been a long time since I thought or spoke like a thirteen-year old, but again I was fortunate enough to be able to observe my kids and their friends.

For the fictional world of Hero’s Sword and Mallory, I had a bit more freedom. After all, this was the world of a video game, so I had lots of options. I could have gone all out with magic, dragons, elves, and wizards – all the trappings of high fantasy. But that’s not really where I wanted to go.

Instead, I wanted more of a medieval “real world” feel. Sure, there’s a certain amount of fantasy. After all, Jaycee is transported into a video game and that’s pretty fantastic.

But I didn’t want to get involved with inventing a new set of rules – or explaining them. It would be far easier to simply base the world of the game on some basic tenets of history, including feudalism, over lords (the “Empire”), petty wars between feudal lords (barons, or in my case, estate owners).

This freed me of the need to develop my own complex set of “standard operating procedures” for my world. Anybody who has ever played a game based on feudal principles would understand the rules of the road. But since my game world is fictional, I was able to build the relationships between Empire, estates, lords, and commoners pretty much how I wanted to – such as simultaneously allowing a woman to rule and having her people not completely approve of that because of a long history of male rulers.

Once I got into the groove, I really enjoyed my fictional world. Since so much of what I write is crime fiction that is very much based on fact (face it, there are certain things a police officer just cannot do), this was an extremely fun and liberating exercise.

I really enjoyed the world of Mallory and I hope I get to spend a lot more time there. And I hope you did to.

So tell me – what is the one thing you need in a fictional world to make it believable?

 

Power Play coverPOWER PLAY

by Mary Sutton

All Jaycee Hiller wants to do is survive eighth grade. Mostly that means hanging with her friend, Stu, avoiding the cheerleading squad, secretly crushing on Nate Fletcher, and playing her favorite video game, Hero’s Sword. When she receives a new video game controller, Jaycee finds herself magically transported into the Hero’s Sword video game world. Survival takes on a whole new meaning. No longer battling with a plastic joystick, Jaycee picks up a real sword and bow & arrow and readies herself for battle. Can she save Lady Starla’s rule in Mallory, keep herself in one piece, and maybe even learn something about surviving middle school?

Buy your copy today at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AAN4GCU/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwbryanthoma-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00AAN4GCU