Armchair Audies Category Report: Teen Fiction

I love listening to YA books. It works well with my desire to listen while on the job, generally - being more plot-driven than writerly - so as long as it's not too full of vampires and self-indulgently tragic teens, I like it. So I was delighted to sign up to opine about the Audies Teens category for the Armchair Audies.

Here are the nominees - as I said with my post about the Literary Fiction category, the 'read' link below includes a sound sample so you can judge my judging. 

INHERITANCE Christopher Paolini Read by Gerard Doyle (Listening Library) Read the review
THE FAULT IN OUR STARS John Green Read by Kate Rudd (Brilliance Audio) Read the review
ENCHANTED Alethea Kontis Read by Katherine Kellgren (Brilliance Audio) Read the review
THE DIVINERS Libba Bray Read by January LaVoy (Listening Library) Read the review
DODGER Terry Pratchett Read by Stephen Briggs (Harper Audio) Read the review

I have thoughts. :)

Inheritance is in last place for me. It's not Gerard Doyle's fault - I've enjoyed his narration of the Eragon series, he's great with tension and emotion and all the funny names involved. But this book didn't need to be 31 hours long. It didn't need to be 21 hours long. The convoluted wrapping up of the series just didn't flow nicely for me, so I was too often bored or frustrated while listening. So blame Christopher Paolini - or his editor - and enjoy anything else Doyle narrates.

The next three are all yummy texts, so it's harder to rank them. I'll put Diviners at the bottom of the bunch, despite my major fondness for Libba Bray, whose Beauty Queens I (correctly) pegged as the Narration by Author Audie winner last year. January LaVoy's narration is sweet and she handled the tension really well, but there is something a little too plummy about her voice that keeps me at a distance. I felt that this book - which takes place in the world of flappers and mysterious happenings in 1920s New York - should have had a narrator whose voice was younger and a little rawer. It's rare that I think a book would be better in print (as opposed to just as good, or better), but I wish I'd read this one instead of listening. 

Dodger, as I've said, is a grand character in a not-quite-grand-enough book. I loved listening to it, because Stephen Briggs was as sharp and bright and clever as the character he was telling us about, but Terry Pratchett's novel wasn't quite the gem I'd wished it to be. 

A gem in truth: Alethea Kontis's Enchanted. It is a treasure of a book, and Katherine Kellgren is pure magic as a narrator of YA books. (Of others, too - I follow her from genre to genre, but rarely in non-YA is she called upon to growl or howl or croak.) Her characters, be they human or fairy or frog, are charming and true and as I posted when I first listened to this book, I was caught up from beginning to end of the entire tale. Though I think Kellgren should automatically win every award, and I consider this as exemplary as it gets, I suspect the winner this year will be:

John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, narrated by Kate Rudd. There's a reason everyone you know has read this, even if they don't have teens in their lives pushing it on them. It's sweet and sad and smart and so very superb. I'll repeat: an amazing listen, but difficult, especially if you're not into bawling with headphones on. Rudd has an excellent teen voice, sarcastic and unsure and headlong and scared as the plot demands (and this plot demands a lot, emotionally, from the reader.) All thumbs up.

An Enchanted Reading of Enchanted

Enchanted by Alethea Kontis
(Harcourt Children's Books, 2012)
Format: audio CDs from library (narrated by Katherine Kellgren)

From Goodreads: "It isn’t easy being the rather overlooked and unhappy youngest sibling to sisters named for the other six days of the week. Sunday’s only comfort is writing stories, although what she writes has a terrible tendency to come true.

When Sunday meets an enchanted frog who asks about her stories, the two become friends. Soon that friendship deepens into something magical. One night Sunday kisses her frog goodbye and leaves, not realizing that her love has transformed him back into Rumbold, the crown prince of Arilland—and a man Sunday’s family despises.

The prince returns to his castle, intent on making Sunday fall in love with him as the man he is, not the frog he was. But Sunday is not so easy to woo. How can she feel such a strange, strong attraction for this prince she barely knows? And what twisted secrets lie hidden in his past—and hers?"

Okay, remember last year when I couldn't shut up about the brilliance of Katherine Kellgren's narration of L.A. Meyer's Bloody Jack series? And I said she would be the winner of the Audie award for Teen audiobooks? And how I was right? Well, that just shows you two things: Katherine Kellgren is a great narrator, and I know what I'm talking about. 

Now that we've established that, and keeping in mind that this year Kellgren is up against Kate Rudd's gorgeous reading of John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, I am all about this particular Audies contender. (Except the cover. Not the audiobook's fault, but really, this cover is belch, right? How is her position natural or comfortable?)

Oh, Sunday! Such a classic misunderstood youngest sibling with a secret. She's the 7th daughter of a 7th daughter in a kingdom where magic is fairly commonplace, so really she shouldn't need to pour out her troubles to the frog at her local fairy well to make herself feel better. (But then again, I knew I had secret magic powers, and plenty of siblings, but it didn't stop me from turning my cat into my confidant.) Nevertheless, Sunday does end up sharing her diary with Grumble the talking frog, who they both know is enchanted, but who doesn't change when Sunday kisses him. Until, one day, he does, but she doesn't know it. She just knows that Prince Rumbold is "requesting" all eligible young ladies in Arilland to a series of balls, and her fairy godmother is on hand to assist her and her sisters in getting ready. Kontis plays with more fairy tales than I can count (or know, I'm sure) - in her household alone is a woman with many offspring living in a shoe, a tall tower with just one window at the top, a changeling son, a cursed spindle, a handful of magic beans, and, of course, birds that help with chores so Sunday will be ready in time for the ball. But nothing is straightforward, and Kontis wraps everything up in a coming-of-age framework that leaves me pondering the nature of story and the oral tradition. And pretty eager for October's publication of the second in this series, to boot.

Kellgren, of course, is perfect for this title. She has an entrancing story-time voice that gives full weight to emotional moments while never slackening the pace of the adventure. I find myself envying any children to whom she might read bed-time stories, but sorry for her, too, because I'm sure those kids would never let her go without repeatedly begging for "just one more" book. But I don't mean it's treacly or insipid in any way - and she definitely knows how to tap into a dark side for all those moments of evil and danger.

Not to be totally cheesy about it, but I was truly enchanted throughout.