train thoughts on a book

[screechfox]

Hell Followed With Us is a YA post-apocalypse horror novel about a trans guy infected with a body horror bioweapon, who escapes from the fundamentalist cult that raised him. I love that it exists, I was excited to read it, and... it's fine?

Sometimes I can't tell whether I dislike books because of flaws in the book, or because I'm not the right person to read it. All of the elements were right for me, but I think I would want to read them in a different novel. I think I've aged out of YA fiction, or else I've grown away from some constraints of the genre.

It's also a glaring example of how the "for fans of [X thing] and [Y thing]" style of marketing is misleading. It was marketed as similar to Gideon the Ninth and Annihilation, and while I can see why for both... it's just not the same.

Finished it on a train to London, which is sometimes the only way I finish books that I've stalled on. I'm not sure what I'm going to read next; I should have put an extra book in my bag so I'd have another option.

Comments

[yarnofariadne]

I've recently come to accept I've aged out of YA fiction, too. Recently I've been trying to pare down my to-read list and I've just cut swathes of YA out of it because like. I don't think I'm interested in reading about another 17 year-old, honestly. There are notable exceptions but I think at some point it just becomes something that isn't for us any more.

[screechfox]

Absolutely, yeah. I don't know if it's reading about teenagers generally or if it's a specific amount/type of... teenagerness? that doesn't work for me. I know some of my favourite media has teenage principal characters. /shrugs Either way, I don't think I'll pick up more YA unless there's *significant* incentive drawing me to a book. There's so many other books in the world for me to read, anyway!

(On another train now!)