Tagged: mental illness
Discussion: #YANeedsMore…
If any of you were on Twitter a few days ago you were probably annoyed at me for tweeting so many things under the YANeedsMore hashtag. I apologize for that but it got me so excited about the chance to share my thoughts on what my favourite genre needs more of. I don’t expect it to change anything because hashtags rarely do but it was nice to get things out there. Some of my suggestions for #YANeedsMore were:
- Main characters who try, fail and then learn from their mistakes. Just like real teenagers do!
- Main characters who struggle with mental illness as teens: clinical depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, OCD, etc.
- Characters with parents who care when their teenager suddenly starts behaving completely differently!
- Characters who live in poverty and struggle with it daily. Not everyone lives in the suburbs.
- Teen characters with chronic illnesses. Yes, even teenagers can be sick! And sometimes it isn’t always obvious.
- Female protagonists who are okay with not currently being in a relationship. Seriously, not everyone wants to date constantly.
- Disabled characters as main characters, not as cheesy inspiration for the able-bodied protagonist.
- Clumsy non-athletes who don’t become butt-kicking machines after only a few weeks of training. Not realistic!
Those are just the highlights of my time on that particular hashtag but there were so many other tweets highlighting the need for actual racial diversity, interracial relationships, LGBT representation and so much more.
Now, this is absolutely not to say that books with these characteristics don’t exist because they do. And that’s awesome! But it would be nice to see a few more with some of these traits, to see them in the mainstream. I love that so many indie authors are working on bringing some of these books to life but I would really love to see big publishers with the guts to publish YA books like that.
So what I want to know now is this: What do you think YA as a genre needs more of?
Deadline by Mira Grant
(Cover picture courtesy of Orbit Books.)
Shaun Mason is a man without a mission. Not even running the news organization he built with his sister has the same urgency as it used to. Playing with dead things just doesn’t seem as fun when you’ve lost as much as he has.
But when a CDC researcher fakes her own death and appears on his doorstep with a ravenous pack of zombies in tow, Shaun has a newfound interest in life. Because she brings news—he may have put down the monster who attacked them, but the conspiracy is far from dead.
Now, Shaun hits the road to find what truth can be found at the end of a shotgun.
After Feed cured me of my irrational zombie fear, I decided to read the second book in the Newsflesh trilogy: Deadline. I’m really glad I did because it builds on things hinted at in the first book very well. If you don’t want to read any spoilers, I suggest you stop reading right now.
It’s been a year since Georgia died, but since Shaun talks to her in his head constantly, it feels like she’s a major character. Shaun talks to her aloud and accepts that he is mentally ill because he doesn’t want to let go of his adoptive sister. His point of view is very different from George’s because he’s more reckless and unsure of himself and what he’s doing. I guess that’s a natural response to shooting your sister in the spinal column after she’s been injected with live Kellis-Amberlee. Deadline follows Shaun’s quest for the truth and throughout the journey he has a lot of character development as each new, horrible revelation comes to light.
The focus of Deadline isn’t politics like it was in Feed. Instead, it focuses a lot more on the Kellis-Amberlee virus itself. The level of detail Mira Grant has put into her world-building is fantastic and, unlike a lot of zombie novels, she explains what causes people to turn into zombies. Truly, this is science fiction at its finest because it has a fast-paced plot while paying attention to character development and world-building.
I give this book 5/5 stars.