Teenage Heroines in Dystopian Futures

[Palanan]

If you absolutely, positively had to read a book about a teenage heroine fighting the evil overlords of a dystopian future, which one would it be?

I assume there are about a million of them by now. Is there one worth reading?

[Man on Fire]

If you go in with such an attitude, I doubt you will enjoy any book no matter how well it's written, I could give you Dostojevsky and you'd probably hate it before the first page.

[Cheesegear]

Is there one worth reading?

As in, for yourself? Or for an actual teenaged girl?

The Divergent series has one or two fundamental social messages for girls (and boys, I guess).
The Uglies series you can tell what it's about just by the title.
Shatter Me isn't bad, either.
Angelfall is alright.

...Unless you're a 30 year-old man, and your understanding of social norms and correct responses to stressful situations is well and firmly cemented as part of your adult personality...
Then why would you bother?

[JeenLeen]

I really liked the Hunger Games books. To be honest, I was embarrassed to enjoy reading them, but they were a lot of fun. I really disliked Divergent (read part of it, couldn't get into it but wanted to finish it. Someone saw it and commented they planned on buying it, so I gave it to them.)

My main dislike of Divergent was that the world seemed to make little sense, as in the setting seemed internally inconsistent. Which is odd, since I'm pretty sure the society in the Hunger Games is also fairly absurd with how they distribute where different resources are developed, but I liked it. Maybe since the inconsistencies were less prominent in the Hunger Games? Or, rather, once I accepted the premise of "the Capitol uses crazy traps instead of more sound/traditional tactics", some of the stuff that looked absurd was easier to accept or ignore.
I'd give examples o inconsistencies in Divergent, but I don't remember any. Maybe I just found the writing and characterization less appealing in Divergent.

Those are the only two I'm familiar with. I've seen commercials for some movies that seem to be "Hunger Game clones", in the sense of strange dystopia + female teenage lead, but none of them looked appealing.

[Kitten Champion]

I'd recommend Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. It's a dystopian YA novel written in a 20 Minutes into the Future-style, depicting an America that's been pushed more and more into a Police State with a singular lack of respect for individual rights in the face of Terrorism and supported by ubiquitous and sophisticated surveillance technologies.

The teenage heroes of the novel use their practical (as in existing real-world) knowledge of the tech to subvert the system and fight back against the Department of Homeland Security.

It's genuinely intended to be subversive. As opposed to another metaphor for the alienating aspects of high school or whatever. Though it's hard to discuss in any depth on this forum.


You can read it for free as Doctorow embraces Creative Commons for his work, at craphound.com I believe.

[5a Violista]

My main dislike of Divergent was that the world seemed to make little sense, as in the setting seemed internally inconsistent. Which is odd, since I'm pretty sure the society in the Hunger Games is also fairly absurd with how they distribute where different resources are developed, but I liked it. Maybe since the inconsistencies were less prominent in the Hunger Games? Or, rather, once I accepted the premise of "the Capitol uses crazy traps instead of more sound/traditional tactics", some of the stuff that looked absurd was easier to accept or ignore.

Divergent's world starts to make more sense after the Huge Reveal that occurs in the third book. Like, the first book leaves a lot of setting-specific questions such as, why are there so many factionless and why's the world set up that way? Why even the factions in the first place? Why is only that one city left? How do the factions work, anyway? What does divergent even mean? and so on.
Like, all of these questions get resolved in the third book, when the main characters discover that the entire city is the last mildly-successful social/genetic experiment trying to reverse the effects of careless genetic engineering, and is intentionally being shut off from the rest of the world in order to see if it's a successful experiment. Generations earlier, America was swept with the craze of genetically modifying your children to make them better - better soldiers (by being braver and more willing to follow orders...but also less able to think for themselves or be compassionate or...) or better scholars (more intelligent and curious...but lacking the ability to relate to others or be self-sacrificing or...) or very kind (at the expense of...blah blah blah). Scientists decided to try to see what sort of society could correct that careless engineering, and the faction-system was the only one to survive infighting for a couple of generations.

A "Divergent" person is, then, someone with fewer genetically altered genes than the average person. All the Erudites' chemicals specifically targeted specific genes, and that's why the Divergent were less affected (or unaffected entirely) by them. Of note, the main character's mother was "genetically unmodified" and was introduced into the experiment just to see what affect that would have on the population, in hopes it would accelerate the experiment. The experiment was actually working, until a decision by the Abnegation leaders led to the events of the first book, and then a disagreement between Erudite's leader and Abnegation's leaders led to the events of the second book...and then the domestic abuse that occurred from before the first book finally led to the events of the third book.

So, yeah. The setting is more internally consistent as soon as you realize the entire city is basically a giant, controlled social experiment to analyze (and correct) careless genetic modifications.So...the setting makes more sense starting from the third book, and reveals that the dystpian setting is slightly different from what the first two books implied.


If you're looking for an enjoyable dystopian teenage heroine series, I would actually recommend The Selection.

It's pretty different than most teenage dystopian series, and most of the "dystopia" is a result of class differences and low social mobility instead of powerful-leader-likes-ritually-killing-people or factions-defined-by-one-trait. It's an actual romance, instead of just romance-in-the-background, so that's a plus. I really liked it.

It also deals with real serious issues, like politics, abuse, poverty, and discrimination, so if you hate reading things like that then you probably shouldn't read this series.
Basic setting is that the US and Canadian government collapsed and was replaced by a monarchy that saw itself as a continuation of the previous governments. Supporters of the new government were given high-class aristocratic jobs like military, celebrities, and so on...while those who didn't were put in lower classes with specific low-paying jobs available. In order to boost morale, every male heir would hold a reality TV-style competition like The Bachelor, to determine his Queen.

Generations later, the story takes place when a girl from one of the lowest classes somehow gets chosen to be a contestant (and she didn't really want it anyway, because she was already preparing to marry an even lower-classed boy in secret) and decides to go along with it largely because it means her family gets paid a lot of money so long as she remains a contestant.

[The Glyphstone]

If you go in with such an attitude, I doubt you will enjoy any book no matter how well it's written, I could give you Dostojevsky and you'd probably hate it before the first page.

I've read Dostoevsky - C+P, specifically - and I'd rather read Hunger Games than go through that again.:smallbiggrin:

[Velaryon]

I enjoyed Divergent as I was reading it, because the action is pretty well-written. From the instant I finished the last page, though, I started to like the book less and less. Without the reveals that come in the later books, the setting makes absolutely no sense and feels completely unbelievable (I stopped after the first book, and am mostly taking it on faith that those who say the later books make it make sense are right).

What bothered me most is how the book took the old Harry Potter-style "sort the characters into groups based on one dominant personality trait" thing and then didn't give the characters any other personality traits. Being Dauntless meant not only that you were brave, it meant that you were reckless to the point of stupidity. Being Abnegation meant that you weren't just selfless, you literally got to enjoy nothing in life and only helping others mattered. And so on for the other factions. It made the whole world feel unbelievable and artificial to me.

I have to get ready for work, but I'll try and post some more about other dystopian series later on.

[Cheesegear]

What bothered me most is how the book took the old Harry Potter-style "sort the characters into groups based on one dominant personality trait" thing and then didn't give the characters any other personality traits.

Wasn't that the point? :smallconfused:

[JeenLeen]

There's a book called Icon (http://store.ancientfaith.com/icon-a-novel/)that... technically meets this definition (teenage girl in dystopia against dystopia) but sorta doesn't as well. She's not violent, it's very near future (no year stated, but could be next year from the tech-levels/history), and she doesn't fight the overlords in charge but rather deals with local bureaucrats. It's very closely tied to real world religion*, so I can't discuss particulars here. It presumes a fair knowledge of the heroine's religion; at least, I reckon one who read it not used to such would be confused about a lot from the girl's perspective.
I found it a very heartening book about keeping faith in a world set against it.

So, although it is in context and themes rather different from books like The Hunger Games, I did find the writing style and 'teenage girl' feel to be rather similar. I reckon the author was trying to write a fiction book for faithful that was of similar to the 'teenage heroine' genre.

*the dystopia is basically a coup led to religion in general and Christianity in particular being outlawed. The book doesn't go much into the politics (beyond maybe a page or two at one point, when the girl asks "why did they do this?"). I found the answer to that a bit of a strawman, but no more outlandish than the premise of some of these other books (e.g., Hunger Game's political framework and logistics.)

[Leewei]

"The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" by Neal Stephenson, starts with a four-year-old fatherless girl who, in a grimdark cyberpunk world, finds a book.

[Velaryon]

Wasn't that the point? :smallconfused:

Considering that the thing that makes Tris special is that she's a two-dimensional character in a book full of one-dimensional characters, I'd say you're right, that is the point.

To me, that's not a good thing.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I like The 100 as a television series, but from what I heard the books don't have nearly the same scope, so those don't count as a teenage heroine fighting the evil overlords of a dystopian future.

I have read The Wishsong of Shannara. It's not the best book in the series, but it does fit the profile. The Elf Stones of Shannara is better, but those female heroines are both kind of secondary characters to mister Whiny "Why are you here" McWhinyface, so that one would have been even better if it had been about female heroines fighting the evil overlords of a dystopian future.

[Cheesegear]

Considering that the thing that makes Tris special is that she's a two-dimensional character in a book full of one-dimensional characters, I'd say you're right, that is the point.

Remember in High School Musical how Troy could play basketball, but also wanted to sing.
And how it's a movie for children, and thus, the message of the movie is real simple, and therefore effective for its target audience? You can be good at lots of things, don't put yourself in a box.

Almost like...The Divergent series wasn't written for adults. Weird.


I like The 100 as a television series, but from what I heard the books don't have nearly the same scope

Confirmed. The books are actually fairly terrible. The show is much, much better than the books...And the show isn't even that good. :smallamused:

[The Glyphstone]

Remember in High School Musical how Troy could play basketball, but also wanted to sing.
And how it's a movie for children, and thus, the message of the movie is real simple, and therefore effective for its target audience? You can be good at lots of things, don't put yourself in a box.

Almost like...The Divergent series wasn't written for adults. Weird.




Which is honestly being unfair to teenagers/young adults, in a lot of cases. People write simple, flat messages because that's what they expect the market will want, and they're right. But the difference between say, a 13 year old and a 15-16 year old in the complexity of stories they can absorb is significant, and yet people keep writing books with 16-year old protagonists and 13-year old themes.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Confirmed. The books are actually fairly terrible. The show is much, much better than the books...And the show isn't even that good. :smallamused:

What I like about it is for instance that the teenage angsting is actually recognizable for people who have been teenagers. (Rather than say people who were hatched as adults, or Benjamin Button.) Any hack writer can write a teenager who yells that people just don't understand them, in the 100 they get a whole bunch of freedom and responsibility, then the adults try to reign them back in, then the adults start making stupid decisions and then the teenagers correctly point out that they don't understand stuff and aren't trying too. It's a thing we've all been through at one point or another, though obviously not at the same scale, (also: we weren't always correct, but at least it felt like we were,) and it's kind of surprising how many authors writing for a teenage audience get it wrong and just write "the rebellious one" as being rebellious for the rebelliols. So in that respect, writing situations in which humans act like humans, they get some good hits in. With one or two wide misses in there as well, but hey, that's TV.

[Cheesegear]

But the difference between say, a 13 year old and a 15-16 year old in the complexity of stories they can absorb is significant, and yet people keep writing books with 16-year old protagonists and 13-year old themes.

I vaguely recall that the hardest demographic to write for, is 9-12 year-old boys.
They're getting a bit too old for randumb stuff, like Spongebob. The vast majority of them aren't going to be sexually aware, so there goes that. And they're almost certainly too young to understand social/political commentary.

...Which is how you end up with Redwall; Good guys are almost always good. Bad guys are almost always bad. You can have people die, but you can't have people be murdered. And you end up with all sorts of fine distinctions like that, because you're writing a book for not even a young adult, but someone who also isn't necessarily a child.

[JoshL]

My favorite that I've read in the past couple years is Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace. It's about a ghostbuster in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and if any part of that seems appealing, you'll probably enjoy it.

[Ranxerox]

It isn't a perfect match the OP, since the dystopia lacks overlords, but I am going to recommend Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. It does have a teenage girl fighting to fix a dystopia and save the human race, and it is better than most books of this general genre.

[JeenLeen]

If we want to really stretch the scope (as Diamond Age and Octavia Butler's books might), then Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn books might count. The first one focuses on a female recruited to help overthrow a dystopic overlord. I forget her age, though I could see it being older teenager to early 20s.

[Leewei]

Daniel Keys Moran's "The Continuing Time" series features a variety of genetically modified boys and girls in a dystopian future.

[BWR]

I vaguely recall that the hardest demographic to write for, is 9-12 year-old boys.
They're getting a bit too old for randumb stuff, like Spongebob. The vast majority of them aren't going to be sexually aware, so there goes that. And they're almost certainly too young to understand social/political commentary.

...Which is how you end up with Redwall; Good guys are almost always good. Bad guys are almost always bad. You can have people die, but you can't have people be murdered. And you end up with all sorts of fine distinctions like that, because you're writing a book for not even a young adult, but someone who also isn't necessarily a child.

Huh. I would have thought it started getting easier to write for kids at this level, not harder. Now the kids are old enough to start appreciating real literature.
It was at this age I started reading Tolkien, Poe, Asimov, Clarke and Eddings. Granted, I don't read Eddings any more, but there's always a transitional author or ten.

[Yora]

"The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" by Neal Stephenson, starts with a four-year-old fatherless girl who, in a grimdark cyberpunk world, finds a book.

Yes, that one was also my thought. It's a proper speculative science fiction novel with literary merits that came out long before Hunger Games and it's clones.

[Ramza00]

I've read Dostoevsky - C+P, specifically - and I'd rather read Hunger Games than go through that again.:smallbiggrin:

Goes on a pivot that is kind of half hijacking the flow of the conversation.



Aww the literature works of Fyodor Dostoevsky, so unique. Here is some information on Fyodor Dostoevsky that will help you better understand how some aspects of these works are different than the majority / average literature.


Wonderful epilepsy, wonderful temporal lobe epilepsy, and a specfic type of temporal lobe epilepsy that Doctors are now convinced that Dostoevsky had. The name is Geschwind Syndrome though often it goes by the name Gastaut-Geschwind Syndrome

We know for a fact Dosteovsky had epilepsy we are just convinced he had a specific type of epilepsy based off his symptoms even though we can't prove Dostoevsky had this specific form but we have hundreds of other patients with the same type of symptoms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschwind_syndrome

The symptom list based off his personal diaries which Fyodor kept a lot of (he wrote diary entires where he states when he is about to have an attack, during the attack, and after for his type of epilepsy had specific symptoms such as aura and blah blah medical stuff), the other artifacts he left behind, the notes of his family and friends (who were often the caretakers of him), 1/2 of his books / stories dealing with characters with Epilepsy such as the Idiot...blah, blah, blah lots more stuff that I am skipping for the amount of "evidence" we have on Fyodor is overwhelming and most people we do not have this amount but we do with Fyodor he is a special case.

Fyodor Dostoevsky the guy where this is one of the pages of his manuscript.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e4/55/c9/e455c9d462a5aca2a1532e88384f7c72.jpg

So what are the symptoms of this specific type of temporal epilepsy called Geschwind Syndrome?

Hypergraphia- Extensive Writing and Drawing, a Compulsive need to write and draw
Circumstantiality- where you are long winded with your speaking or writting, and there is a circular type logic with this long winded speaking, but it is also meandering. You just go on and on. And there is a stickiness to the topics you talk about.
Atypical sexuality - In most patients there is an altered sexuality where they are less sexual, they are hyposexual. In a smaller amount of patients the opposite occurs and it is hypersexual. Furthermore what they are attracted to may be different.
Hyperreligiosity - I personally do not like this term for I think the use of the word Hyperspirituality, feeling oneness, a sense of joy during the attack is a better descriptor but I did not change the bolded text for these are the original 4 symptoms of the medical researcher Norman Geschwind who discovered the connection and the specific type of brain epilepsy in a specific brain region in the 1970s and 1980s. Researches in todays term often use the term "intensified mental life" instead for it is most patients it is not just religious or spiritual but also things like a deeper cognitive and emotional connection both internally and also internally / externally connected.

There are also lot more common symptoms of Geschwald Syndrome that are mood, energy level, emotions related but the thing is those 4 symptoms are the nexus of the ones associated with Geschwald syndrome for lots of other conditions like bipolar, schizoaffective disorder, certain types of poisoning / malnutrition / parasites and so on, we can't be sure of all these dozens of other people in the literature and art community that it may be Geschwald or it may be something completely else but we are pretty confident Dostoevsky had Geschwald.

Also less than 1 in 10 people with temporal lobe epilepsy have Geschwald Syndrome for we are talking specific areas of the temporal lobe and a specific type of epilepsy with different things happening on the biological level at the cellular size.

------

I bring all of this up to point out neurodiversity and how people are so alike but also so different and we need to be appreciative of this fact. For example Dostoevsky very much added to Art and Literature and is usually citied as one of the most important literature authors of all time. Differences need to be appreciated, until people are failing to thrive and are suffering due to their differences.

We need to be inclusive and accepting of these neurodifferences. But also realize that sometimes people do not thrive do to illness and disorders and if they are not thriving we need to figure out how to create support systems, non medicine treatments, but also medicine treatments and what is the best treatment depends on the individual and it has to be tailored in a way the individual is both thriving and they like the change.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'd recommend Little Brother by Cory Doctorow...

I'm not the OP, but you sold me on the book to the point where I spent 15 minutes looking for my Kindle just to download it onto something (turned out it was on my bookshelf). The real world tech knowledge stuff just sounds like the sort of thing YA books are missing to me.


Remember in High School Musical how Troy could play basketball, but also wanted to sing.
And how it's a movie for children, and thus, the message of the movie is real simple, and therefore effective for its target audience? You can be good at lots of things, don't put yourself in a box.

Almost like...The Divergent series wasn't written for adults. Weird.

As somebody who read, enjoyed, and got Frankenstein at 15 (and other 'complex' books at 13/14), I find this incredibly insulting.

High School Musical suffers from three 'problems' that lead to a simple message. It's aimed at people somewhat below the YA market* in age (although still enjoyable if only because your little sister forced you to watch them), it's a musical where several of it's songs don't so much forward the plot as explain the current plot point, and it's a film instead of a book. The last is a big one, a simple book can easily have as many layers of meaning as a complex film (although they can be similar).

I mean, the only reason I describe the book I'm currently writing as 'adult science fiction' is the need to have characters in their twenties with a definite place in society to make the plot work. I could very easily make it YA, although it doesn't have many of the trademarks of modern YA sci-fi (notably the fact that the protagonists have no interest in rebelling against a society they agree with, but there's also the fact that the 'love triangle' is just a nonstandard relationship), because while the themes are relatively complex (political division, extremism and justifications, retribution and vengeance, action versus acceptance) they're nothing that people in their mid to late teens, at least, would be unable to handle. I'm not, because I've got no interest in having my book compared to YA dystopia books when I'm going for a very different feel, instead of teenaged heroines in a dystopian future I've got a mid twenties heroine in a rather mixed future, which leans heavily towards the idea that destroying the society you live in solves nothing. But dropping the main characters' ages by about seven years and getting them involved in the plot in a different way and I could have a workable YA work without changing the actual plot.

If a 'young adult' came up to me and asked for my recommendation as to what to read then most YA dystopias wouldn't make it onto my list of recommendations for them. What would are novels like Snow Crash (which has a teenage heroine as a secondary character, but she's integrated into the world better than many adults), Revelation Space, or Neverwhere. I want to recommend something relatively complex, I want to challenge them, and I feel like the current YA trends are a bit too safe and unchallenging compared to what they could be. I see the same themes over and over, and while I know it's not the genre as a whole, it seems to be what I tend to see of the genre (even back when I read it, although I read more 'male oriented' examples).

* Which is a hilariously broad market, to the point where I stopped reading it in my late teens because it had to aim at the lower levels. There's great and complex YA books out there, but at a certain point it becomes easier to just move over to the adult literature sections of the bookstore, which have a greater variety of books anyway.


If we want to really stretch the scope (as Diamond Age and Octavia Butler's books might), then Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn books might count. The first one focuses on a female recruited to help overthrow a dystopic overlord. I forget her age, though I could see it being older teenager to early 20s.

I think Vin is 17ish taking all three books into account (remember that each book takes place over several months and there's two roughly year long time skips, the Original Trilogy spans about four to five years in world). She begins about mid teens and ends the series late teens/early twenties. I remember her explicitly being fifteen or sixteen in the first book, although I might be mistaken.

[t209]

I'd recommend Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. It's a dystopian YA novel written in a 20 Minutes into the Future-style, depicting an America that's been pushed more and more into a Police State with a singular lack of respect for individual rights in the face of Terrorism and supported by ubiquitous and sophisticated surveillance technologies.

The teenage heroes of the novel use their practical (as in existing real-world) knowledge of the tech to subvert the system and fight back against the Department of Homeland Security.

It's genuinely intended to be subversive. As opposed to another metaphor for the alienating aspects of high school or whatever. Though it's hard to discuss in any depth on this forum.


You can read it for free as Doctorow embraces Creative Commons for his work, at craphound.com I believe.
Well, would be if not for the fact that the hero is not hero, even by anti-hero standard.
Like using their skills for self-serving nature (like cutting class), trying to say "police state is bad" while ignoring why his dad was worried about him missing in terrorist attack, strawman villains, and every police action being caused by him that didn't help with message.
Well, now that I'm done with rant, what about Persona 5 even if it's set in mundane time?

[Cheesegear]

Huh. I would have thought it started getting easier to write for kids at this level, not harder. Now the kids are old enough to start appreciating real literature.

43% of Australians aged 15 and over read below Level 3 (ABS (http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Lookup/4228.0Main+Features202011-12)). Level 3 involves reading and integrating literature into real life. Almost half of Australians can't do that.

Wikipedia says about the same for Americans. But I don't know what government link I would use, because I'm not American.

Point is, almost half the population can't read complicated/allegorical texts as adults, let alone as children.

I'm on an internet forum about that catered originally to people who like Dungeons and Dragons. I have access to reliable (but not fast, lol Australia) internet, and all of the information that that provides. I was well-educated to begin with. I can read. You can read. I imagine that most people on this forum can read. If you read Lord of the Rings when you were 12, that's great. I demolished the Dragonlance and Valdemar series, and I steamrolled through everything by David (& Leigh) Eddings at the local library. I imagine my ability to read, mirrors almost everyone else on this forum, too.

Meanwhile, at school, a whole bunch of my 9th Grade class couldn't read S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders. It actually had to be read to almost half the class.


As somebody who read, enjoyed, and got Frankenstein at 15 (and other 'complex' books at 13/14), I find this incredibly insulting.

Cool. You're in the top 20% of literacy. Well done.

[Velaryon]

Remember in High School Musical how Troy could play basketball, but also wanted to sing.
And how it's a movie for children, and thus, the message of the movie is real simple, and therefore effective for its target audience? You can be good at lots of things, don't put yourself in a box.

Almost like...The Divergent series wasn't written for adults. Weird.

I know that. I'm a Young Adult librarian - it's literally my job to buy these books, read these books, and encourage teens to read these books. I still think Divergent is terrible. "It's only bad because she did it that way on purpose" doesn't work for me. I can think of at least half a dozen dystopian series I would point teens toward before anything written by Veronica Roth.

Also, no I don't remember anything about the High School Musical films because they check nearly every box on the "movies I have no interest in ever seeing" list. I didn't like teen films even when I was a teen, and with a very few exceptions I also don't like musicals. So I'll take your word on whatever you want to say about those movies.

[Anonymouswizard]

43% of Australians aged 15 and over read below Level 3 (ABS (http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Lookup/4228.0Main+Features202011-12)). Level 3 involves reading and integrating literature into real life. Almost half of Australians can't do that.

Wikipedia says about the same for Americans. But I don't know what government link I would use, because I'm not American.

The figures for the UK are about the same I believe, I remember a lot of claims from a few years ago about how only 20% or something of adults were able to successfully complete an English and a Maths GCSE. I don't know of they meant C+ or not U by completing, whether successful grades begin at C or G depends on context (but you're not allowed to leave school until you have a C in both).


Point is, almost half the population can't read complicated/allegorical texts as adults, let alone as children.

I'm on an internet forum about that catered originally to people who like Dungeons and Dragons. I have access to reliable (but not fast, lol Australia) internet, and all of the information that that provides. I was well-educated to begin with. I can read. You can read. I imagine that most people on this forum can read. If you read Lord of the Rings when you were 12, that's great. I demolished the Dragonlance and Valdemar series, and I steamrolled through everything by David (& Leigh) Eddings at the local library. I imagine my ability to read, mirrors almost everyone else on this forum, too.

Good point on this forum's bias, I personally have a secondary bias because most people I know read for fun (side effect of mainly being friends with university educated people).


Meanwhile, at school, a whole bunch of my 9th Grade class couldn't read S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders. It actually had to be read to almost half the class.

I was insanely lucky about this. Shortly after I for my diagnosis I was rocketed from the bottom of English classes to the top. Therefore the divide was never whether you could read the book by the time complex ones appeared, but whether you wanted to. Then when I went on to do my A levels only people who wanted to study English Literature took the English Lit course, I was one of very few that didn't read the entirety of certain novels (Wuthering Heights I'm looking at you).

[/QUOTE]Cool. You're in the top 20% of literacy. Well done.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I was always a good reader. Had to learn to enjoy books with adult protagonists as a kid, couldn't find deep enough books aimed at me (I kid, I read a mixture of both simple and complex).

My point is, I don't think we should say to young adults who are able to handle complexity 'go and read adult books not YA ones', we should have both more and less complex books easily available in the YA age range. Like we tend to in adult books. The ones that are there should definitely be promoted alongside what I think of the Divergent Games category.