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.

Kid Stuff (But Awesome for Adults, Too)

I've listened to some super-good YA books this year. And I have outside proof that the books I'm going to write about are great ones - they all made it onto the "Best-Ever Teen Novels" 100 title short-list that NPR Books came up with this month. So, obviously I'm brilliant, and also you should read these books.

Start with The Fault in our Stars by John Green (which I listened to on audio, read by Kate Rudd. Although it's a great audio - I'm always a fan of Rudd's proficiency with teen voices - the book has some major tear-fest moments, which is mighty inconvenient while driving or trying to get my job done or whatever.) Anyway, TFIOS is a gorgeous, emotion-packed, wry, deep, fun book. About kids with cancer. Our narrator, Hazel, is a terminal teen, which, okay, isn't really a laugh-riot. But she's also just a teen, and a pretty engaging one. Smart and funny and, of course, sarcastic (as all the best teens are.) (Note to my teens: I love your sarcasm. Guess whether or not I am being straightforward.) Anyway, there's a boy - the beautiful Augustus - and books and video games and a Cancer Kids Support Group and hospitals and tulips and, all in all, I want to insist you read it without totally giving away the plot. Lots of people insisted I read it before I got around to it, and I now formally apologize to all of them for taking too long.

So when you've dried your eyes, move on to The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. Frankie is another bright teen, and her intelligence lands her in some serious hot water when she uses it for nefarious purposes. As a student at the formerly all-male prep school that her father attended, she led a fairly shadowy existence until she decides that the still all-male secret society her dad belonged to ought to be infiltrated. Specifically, by her. She can't break into the ranks, but she does manage to wrest control of their actions, directing an escalating series of campus pranks that - well, these things never end up quite textbook. The novel is her detailed confession after things go wrong, and Frankie's voice has tons of wit, brash charm, and more than a smidgen of social commentary. Tanya Eby's narration of the Frankie's journey into herself is fun, smart, and perfectly gauged to the text. I keep pushing this book on people, and so far no one has pushed me back, so I think I can safely say that you, too, will adore reading it.

Not yet sick of exceptionally smart teen girls? Good. Because Robin Wasserman's The Book of Blood and Shadow is next on my list for you. This is a quest, complete with academic puzzles, strange prophetic Eastern Europeans, and murdered friends. Nora and her best friends and her perfect new boyfriend have a lovely time translating ancient letters and manuscripts for a Latin professor, until the professor is the first in a string of murders that sets her on a journey to Prague, beset by secret societies (I do love a secret society) and chased by police. The worlds here are exquisitely drawn, and Wasserman draws you so deeply and steadily into her web that you are captivated before you realize it. Narrator Emily Janice Card's voice is fluid and graceful, despite the plethora of languages in the book, and her pacing and tone during the many tense scenes is, frankly, just a little too chilling at times.

And before we leave Prague, let's settle in with Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone, audiobook read by Khristine Hvam. Did I mention that this is another book about a teenage girl who doesn't quite fit into her world and finds herself on a quest full of danger and self-discovery? This girl is Karou, who, as it turns out, maybe isn't all that human, despite her almost-normal student life in Prague. Her blue hair, inability to tell lies, access to wish-granting charms, and the fact that she was raised by a demon who frequently sends her through doors in his shop into other cities so she can collect teeth for him all point to a certain otherness about her. But she doesn't know who - or what - she is, and when those doors from her demon families' domain all start bearing the same black-handed mark, she has more questions than ever. Hvam's bright, edgy voice mirrors Karou's emotions and adds depth to Hvam's multi-faceted, imaginative, fascinating world. This is one of those audiobooks that kept me up nights listening, and I am eagerly awaiting the second book in the series, out in November. Read this, so you can tap your foot impatiently along with me, won't you?

Paranormal Young Adults

Some crazy things happen to teenagers in America today, if the YA fiction I've been reading lately is any indication. It's so not normal as to be paranormal. Or fantastic. Or some similar designation - I'm not always clear on how SFF genres differentiate themselves. At any rate, all of these heroines were leading what should have been perfectly normal high school lives, and then, things changed.

First teen up is Jessica Mastriani, who is, duh, struck by lighting in Meg Cabot's When Lightning Strikes. (Cabot originally published this series under pen name Jenny Carroll.)  Jess doesn't think it was a big deal, until she woke up the next morning knowing where the missing kid from her family's milk carton was located. With the help of bad boy Rob Wilkins, she discovers that yes, she really can find missing people. And no, it's not always that excellent a skill to possess. Particularly when some people are missing for good reasons, and also, the FBI are really freaking out your mentally unstable family members. 

I've not read much of Cabot's other YA work (though of course that's what she's known for) but I have gobbled up her Airhead, Heather Wells, and Queen of Babble books. They're fast and fun, not too quirky and consistently charming. After Lightning, I quickly moved on to the rest of the 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU books (Code Name Cassandra, Safe House, Sanctuary, and Missing You) and although I was jarred by the big time gap between the 4th and 5th books, I found them all very readable. I'll definitely be keeping Cabot on my radar.

Our next not-so-normal teen is Lenzi, the narrator of Mary Lindsey's Shattered Souls. Lenzi's still mourning her father's voices-in-his-head driven suicide when she turns 17 and starts to hear voices of her own. This freaks her the heck out. Her boyfriend Zak does what he can to calm her, but Zak has his own issues, and besides, it's a bit out of the realm of his experience. This becomes patently obvious when one of the voices takes corporeal form, and quite a cutie-pie form Alden is, too. What's more, Alden informs Lenzi that they've known each other for centuries, that the other voices are those of dead people who need her help to pass peacefully from this world, and that his job is to help her help them.

It's a lot to process, and Alden is both confounded and distressed by the fact that Lenzi can't remember any of this on her own. Gradually she comes to believe in him, and in the need for their work to continue. External pressures in the form of angry dead people, angry Zak, and the angry governing body of soul movers don't help Lenzi's journey, but she's a strong and resourceful character. Lindsey, by the way, is a neighbor friend, and this is her debut. I've been looking forward to its publication for a while now, and enjoying following her journey into authorship. After this inventive novel, I'm eager to see what she'll come up with next.


Finally, meet Kaye. Now, when Kaye was a little girl, Holly Black tells us in Tithe, she played with faeries. Everyone else thought they were her imaginary friends, but when she and her mother return to her grandmother's house after a few peripatetic years, it becomes clear that the Fae Realm is all too real. What's more, if the free faeries don't offer up a sacrificial human to the Dark Court, they'll be bound to the not-at-all-nice queen for seven years. And the free faeries - who include those long-ago playmates of Kaye's - have a plan wherein Kaye becomes the tithe. They explain that they'll trick the queen so Kaye won't die. Probably. Meanwhile, Kaye has befriended a bad boy of her own (these books always include bad boys, I'm finding. Bad boys are good.) He's a servant of the Dark Court, and none too happy about it. Things don't exactly go well for anyone, but Kaye is an intuitive and clever girl who has discovered a lot of power, and isn't willing to stand back rather than use it.

The second in this series, Valiant, alludes only peripherally to Kaye's adventure, but the third, Ironside, brings Kaye back front and center, and adds the characters in Valiant into the mix. Black built a complex world that works nicely with traditional faerie lore, at least as far as I've gleaned it from the unaccountable number of books I've read lately that include both Light and Dark Faerie Courts. (Those Fae get around literature like you wouldn't believe.) There's a distinctly dark and menacing side to Black's rendition, and Kate Rudd, who narrated the first and third audiobooks, captures it deftly. She also infuses a perfect amount of youthful uncertainty and anxiety into Kaye's voice as she deals with myraid new social situations. Renée Raudman voices Valiant, and is a tad breathier than the grittiness of Val's story necessarily merits, but her handling of pacing and suspense is always stellar.


I'm going to have to look for some YA fiction that takes place entirely within the non-magical non-dystopian world I know. Until then, bring on the ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night.