You might have noticed that we Interrobangs are an opinionated crowd.

It’s true! We have Feelings about Things, and we’re not afraid to share them.

And sometimes–gasp!–we don’t even agree.

Take Sean’s post on Saturday. In it, he posited that Young Adult covers are widely embarrassing, and contribute to an “image problem.” He writes of an imaginary adult reader:

Keep in mind, you don’t know much about YA. (And before you demand that our hypothetical reader become better acquainted with a publishing category before dismissing it, ask yourself how much you really know about epic fantasy or chic-lit or whatever genres you’ve decided you don’t care for.) You don’t know about authors like Justine Larbalestier or Meg Rosoff; there’s a good chance you won’t even realise that contemporary YA still exists, so rapidly has it vanished under a rising tide of badly-written pap.

I certainly wouldn’t blame you for thinking that YA begins and ends with this season’s ‘big name’ paranormal/dystopian romance. Which is exactly why YA has an image problem.

When Sean’s post popped up in my Google Reader, I initially found myself nodding along. Yes, the images he shared were very photoshopped! No, those boys don’t look like teenagers at all! These covers could make teenagers feel bad about themselves. That’s a problem!

Then I reached his gallery of “good” covers–the type he’d like to see in YA. And . . . uh . . .

. . .

. . . really, dude?

Covers serve several purposes. Their primary purpose is to catch the eye of a potential reader. Covers that are bright, flashy, opalescent, and nicely composed all do that. Enticing a reader to pick up a book is the first step to getting someone to buy it.

Frankly, bland, abstract covers–text superimposed on waterlilies (snooze!)–don’t do that too well. So I’m not entirely sure the covers linked above would do much for sales.

There’s a reason these covers work for adult literary fiction, though, and that’s because they convey a certain gravity and seriousness. “Read me,” this book declares, “while drinking tea at your favorite coffee shop. I’ll help you quietly contemplate your life.” Part of this is gravity by association; we know that we’re in for a serious, literary read because this is what serious, literary books always look like.

And that brings me to the second purpose of a cover, which is to make an implicit promise to the reader about the content within.

A reader of paranormal romance should be able to guess the genre from a book’s jacket. Ditto, science fiction, and fantasy, and contemporary, and romance.

For example, this cover is effective at communicating its contents (magical angst, and even more magical horses):

Alas, poor Vanyel! I knew him, Tylendel.

And it’s a safe bet that this book contains some spacey shit!:

These are the voyages of the Starship Hardsciencefiction

Why is it a good idea for a cover to help a book reach an audience already amenable to its contents? Because readers are often fiercely loyal of the stuff they love, and they seek out books that will clearly contain the stuff they love. Hook a reader and they’ll stay with you for many, many books. I speak from experience here–I own more Anne McCaffrey novels than I do books by any other person, all because I saw this book cover when I was thirteen, and was excited by the really, really realistic dragon:

I even have a Pernese dragon tattoo. No joke!

I’m not citing these covers because I think they’re particularly aesthetically pleasing; they’re definitely dated and they all have their flaws. But I hope they illustrate why there’s really nothing wrong about the following covers:

A paranormal romance . . .

A historical fantasy set in ancient China . . .

Tallyho, Steampunk!

I think it’s important to note that people who are passionate about these kinds of books don’t find them embarrassing. I was never embarrassed to read a book with a dragon on it, or with a space ship on it. And most teen readers aren’t embarrassed to read books representative of their tastes, either.

There has been a trend, though, to obscure a book’s true contents. I assume that this is for the benefit of “reaching a wider audience” because it almost always means “removing the embarrassing stuff that literary or adult readers worry will make others look down on them.”

As you can imagine, I find this practice incredibly lame.

Why? Because three years ago, I decided that I wanted to get back into YA. And I wanted to read some great young adult science fiction, because that’s what I’ve always loved. It was not hard to easily find sci-fi when I was a teen. But the only sci-fi books I found (after a preposterous amount of searching) looked like this:

What’s worse, Academy 7 gave no indication it was sci-fi from any of the text on the inside or outside cover. Nada!

And this misrepresentation doesn’t only happen with science fiction. I recently read two absolutely devastating contemporary novels about the implosions of young lives. One looked like this:

The other, like this:

In both cases, people responded in surprise to my reviews. “I thought this book was a lighthearted girly novel! I think I’ll look this up!” Meanwhile, in the case of both Academy 7 and Singing the Dogstar Blues, reviews abound where the reader experienced some sense of dismay in realizing that they’d been tricked into reading a sci-fi novel. As much as I love sci-fi, I can’t blame them. Readers know when they’re being lied to! And being tricked is never fun!

I don’t think the current state of covers in YA is flawless. I think too many covers perpetuate the same body shaming in young girls through the promotion of unrealistic beauty that most teen magazines do. Sure, they’re overphotoshopped. And sometimes the cover model is too old, or ridiculously thin, or wearing a stupid prom dress, or (ugh) the wrong race. I’d love to see covers that reflect teenagers as teenagers really are.

But do I think YA covers are embarrassing?

No freakin’ way.

As you can probably guess, as a group of five speculative fiction writers, we often end up reading the same (often highly hyped!) books–and because we’re all so damned opinionated, debate and discussion almost always ensues. Sean and I recently both read Ally Condie’s Matched. You can find our complete reviews here and here, on our respective websites. We thought we’d use this space to expand on some of our reactions.

Sean on Sex

When I was in secondary school (that’s high school for all you Americans), there was one topic of conversation that eclipsed all others for most of my classmates. You’ve probably already guessed from that opener that it was sex, so I’ll just dispense with the build-up and confirm that you’re right.

It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say that people talked about it almost constantly. Sure, almost everybody was bullshitting as hard as they could about it (either that or they were all doing it seven times a week by the age of fifteen, which I have trouble believing), but still. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that sex would have been of chief concern to anybody who suddenly found themselves becoming one half of a teenage romance.

Why, then, do YA protagagonists seem to be so utterly disinterested in sex? I’m not talking about contemporary here, where sex seems to be handled in a far more realistic way by most authors. No, I’m talking about the paranormal romance where both main characters make epic declarations of love to their stunningly-attractive counterparts after holding hands for the first time, or the dystopian where sex, the transgressive act in most heavily oppressive societies, is never once talked about by anybody.

Ally Condie’s Matched obviously falls into the latter category. Cassia’s society is based on the idea that the government (or the ‘Society’, in this case) can let a person live a perfect life by ensuring that they follow a certain statistically-optimal path: people eat what they’re told to eat, die when they’re told to die and love who they’re told to love. By now you probably know how the story begins: Cassia’s ideal match, her best friend Xander, is momentarily replaced on her computer by an image of the outsider Ky. She eventually comes to love them both, but in the end chooses Ky. That outcome will, I am sure, surprise absolutely nobody. I can say that with confidence because this kind of story is all about straining at the limits of a restrictive society. If Cassia chose Xander, it would mean she fell back into the role that the Society picked out for her. And really, where’s the fun in that? The problem comes when Cassia and Ky’s relationship turns out to be as safe and unobjectionable as it could possibly be: they talk, they go for long (endless) walks in the forest, they share poetry with each other. It’s only well after they’re both aware of each other’s feelings that they finally, finally kiss for the first time.

I have two major problems with this. First of all, it’s incredibly unrealistic. Yes, I’m aware that most adults would like to pretend that teenagers never even think of doing more than kissing until they become 18 (and Cassia is near enough at 17, for the record), but the real world just doesn’t work like that. Writers are constantly being told that they can’t talk down to teenage readers, but that’s what writers are doing when they construct such blatantly sugar-coated romances.

The second problem is that the lack of passion in Cassia and Ky’s relationship undermines the entire book. We’re constantly told that what they’re doing is dangerous, yet it never feels that way. If it’s handled properly, sex (or at least the implication of it) can add a level of danger and risk to a forbidden romance that’s nigh impossible to create with hand-holding and chastity. Even having Cassia think about sex (worry about it, be curious about it, decide she doesn’t want it) would have made things more interesting, yet I can’t remember her once doing that. In the end, the central relationship of the novel comes down to a great big ‘meh’ – or, if you’ll excuse the pun, a literal anti-climax.

I’m not entirely sure who to blame for all of this. It’s certainly true that there’s a strong trend for this kind of romance in YA right now, but where did that trend come from in the first place? It’s tempting to blame American/religious prudishness about sex. The great majority of paranormal and dystopian authors are American, after all, and it’s probably not too controversial at this point to say that an awful lot of these books reflect the Mormon ethics of many of their authors. I think there’s probably more to it than that, though. A lot of YA has started to become a kind of wish fulfilment, as evidenced by how often the love interests are hot, mysterious and rich. These are not ‘real’ relationships were talking about here. With some minor exceptions, the conflict between the two main characters is external rather than internal (their undying love for each other is not at stake, only the fulfilment of that love) and all complexities or ambiguities are resolved the moment those external conflicts are removed. I’m not sure if that simplicity could survive meeting such a complicated and touchy subject as sex…and if not, all the better.

Phoebe on Dystopic Elements, and the Danger of Being a Special Snowflake

I’m supposed to be writing on the dystopic elements of Matched, but, truth be told, every time I try to address this topic, my writing gets away from me. The crux of the matter is that there’s not much to say about Ally Condie’s world building. It’s a sound-enough universe—a world where people are monitored and controlled—but it’s also one we’ve seen over and over again in both YA and adult literature. Lois Lowry gave us the same euthanasia of old people; we’ve seen arranged marriages and assigned jobs before. Even the mysterious pills that are carried by members of Cassia Reyes’ society (called, appropriately, The Society) seem lifted right out of The Matrix.

Part of the reason I suspect I’m having so much trouble saying anything about Cassia’s world is because, beyond these broad, derivative brush strokes, we never get to know it, truly, as a place, and this is largely for one specific reason: Cassia. Our narrator isn’t a typical member of her society in any way. Though we’re told that she’s been traditionally a good, obedient citizen, the point from which she diverges from her people begins in the very first chapter. At her Matching Banquet, Cassia is already an exception when she’s not betrothed to a boy in a distant city (like the rest of her cohort), but to someone from her very own town.

We’re told that such a match hasn’t occurred in generations, and certainly not within the lives of Cassia’s peers. This is a common enough trope in young adult literature, I guess—that the main character is special, somehow gifted above her contemporaries. But it’s an ill fit for this kind of science fiction.

When you’re introducing a strange world—either science fictional or fantastic—there are typically two ways to approach it. A writer can either make her viewpoint character a visitor to this universe, a sort of Gulliver, so that he can learn about the strangeness of her surroundings as the audience does. Or the writer can have the viewpoint character begin fully immersed in the universe, and, through the use of word choice and striking detail, slowly teach the reader how this world is different from our own (a process sometimes called “incluing”).

Condie is supposedly taking the second route, but the execution is a bit sloppy because she insists on making Cassia so exceptional. She’s not matched to her mate the same way the other teenagers are, so we never really learn the typical (and I guess we’re meant to assume, sinister?) mating rituals of her people. Then, when she eventually learns that she may have been intended for another boy, that match is also exceptional: another unusual, unheard of pairing with a local. This makes it difficult, very difficult, to wrap one’s head around the laws of the Society, or to even understand what’s so objectionable about it.

This happens again and again in Matched. Most citizens take some science fictional version of Xanax whenever life gets too stressful, but not Cassia (a symbol of “strength” that I rolled my eyes at, as someone who has suffered from panic attacks myself!). Everyone in the Society is supposedly obedient, but her parents enact small acts of rebellion so many times that their occurrences lose their impact. Ky, Cassia’s second love match, is an “Aberration” and so not allowed to own “artifacts” (why no capital letters there, Condie?), but for some reason, he does, anyway. And then, at the novel’s climax, we find out that two of the other sinister pills carried by all citizens don’t even work on two of the primary characters.

Maybe all of this was intentional; maybe Condie was trying to show the fraying seams in her society Society. But I doubt it. In a story like this one, supposedly about an oppressively controlled society, it can really only be a flaw when you show us again and again how everyone in your story is an exception. Otherwise, where’s the danger? Certainly, it doesn’t seem like a world that poses any particular threat to our heroine, Cassia. Because, you know, she’s special.