"Bruce Coville, Fuck Yes" or "Teen Novels We All Know And Love"

[Arhra]

Speaking of Weiss and Hickman, the Death Gate Cycle was pretty neat.

Basically a long time ago a race of wizards broke apart the world into a set of element themed worlds to win their war against this bunch of other wizards by imprisoning them in one of said worlds.

The seven books are all about various shades of how it's gone horribly wrong, following a fellow who's broken out and is exploring the worlds.

[BitVyper]

The point of CYOA books was to teach children that not resorting to cheating when there is no possibility of consequences, is stupid and egotistical. Because people who approach the world like it has a sense of fair play get devoured by alien bee monsters. If you don't cheat, you get cheated.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Ah but if it's that's the point of the books then wouldn't that mean that looking ahead isn't cheating as it's a part of the book? Thus the lesson becomes more about looking before leaping then cheating when necessary.

[pochercoaster]

I vaguely remember enjoying A Wind In the Door by Madeleine L'Engle. And, of course, The Hobbit.

I read some other YA fiction but was frustrated with it. I read the first 2 books of the His Dark Materials trilogy and didn't bother with the third because it seemed poorly written and Lyra basically became a secondary character. Despite the fact that I'm a staunch atheist, the series seemed really heavy-handed, like it was criticizing religion but it didn't know how to without coming off as really condescending. I haven't touched those books in over a decade, though, so maybe I'm wrong.

...Oddly enough, I REALLY enjoyed The Chronicles of Narnia, despite it being racist and sexist and patronizing as hell. I should probably buy the whole series and re read it again.

I tried some Piers Anthony books but gave up on those because they were perverse/creepy. Same thing with Anne McCaffrey. (Are they considered YA authors? IDK.)

There are a couple other books that come to mind but all I can remember about them is the book covers, not the author or much of the plot. Those Holly Black novels LOOK familiar but the plot summary doesn't match up with the few details that I remember.

Edit: Oh yeah, and I liked The Eyes of the Dragon.

[mauve]

Originally Posted by Krylo

That's the one where the Princess just kinda chills with dragons and I think I remember a particular line about having to dance with a chinless prince before she leaves home to hang out with sweet dragons?

Because it's been forever and my memory is foggy but that book was great.

Yup! There was a whole series, but I liked Dealing with Dragons the best because the plot revolved mostly around a strong, resourceful princess and a bunch of awesome dragons. Several super shallow princes showed up to "rescue" her, and she sets them up with other princesses to make them leave her alone because "they'll be happy as long as they go home with A PRINCESS, not necessarily her."

[Bum Bill Bee]

Animorphs was a late 90s Teen-kids book series, and its where 5 teens (who didn't know each other well before) got the ability to change into animals from a crash landed good guy alien. They use this power to combat mind-controlling alien slugs that are doing a highly covert invasion of earth. Oh, and you could only stay in animal form for 2 hours, otherwise you got stuck in it, as Tobias did. Felt like it had a lot of dark themes, and they actually got to go through a huge variety of stuff, time travel, area 51, robot servants of an extinct alien race, being used as pawns by god-like beings...

If anything, it was just fun to look at the human to animal transformations of the book cover and at the corner of the pages where it was like a flip book.

There was also a live-action TV series of it, but it didn't do the books justice at all.



Oh, and I liked reading the chronicles of Pydrian series growing up.