Asking the Wrong Questions

I waited most of September for my review of The End of the World As We Know It to appear on Locus 's website, and now my two other reviews from the August issue have both turned up in quick succession. First up, The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar, a Ruritanian fantasy in which a court magician must save a pair of star-crossed young lovers. There's always been a certain "you know it when you see it" quality to YA fiction, and all the more so in the decades since it has become popular for adult readers to consume it alongside its intended audience. Louis Sachar, author of the beloved YA classic Holes (1998) as well as a raft of novels for younger readers, describes The Magician of Tiger Castle as his first novel for adults. Which of course encourages the critic to read the novel with an eye towards identifying those aspects of it that distinguish one reading category from another. Is it simply that Anatole, our narrator, is a man nearing middle age, a self-d...

Like a lot of genre fans of my generation—and perhaps several generations before and after—I had a Stephen King phase. The adage that the golden age of science fiction is thirteen might just as easily be applied to the mega-prolific horror-meister, who, besides being a gifted scribe with an eye for both the sentimental and the absurd, is a good entry point for young readers looking to explore darker, more disturbing topics. And, also like a lot of King fans, I reached a point in my early twenties where King's work started delivering diminishing returns, and where other authors—some of them, like Shirley Jackson or Daphne du Maurier, he had originally pointed me towards—turned out to have more to offer. I am—once again—most likely not alone in being encouraged to revisit and reevaluate King by the excellent podcast Just King Things , whose hosts, Michael Lutz and Cameron Kunzelman, are reading and discussing King's works in publication order. It's been interesting to be remi...