/lit/ - Literature

>>16168766
>YA bad
By that people refer to mediocre fantasy novels marketed at children and teenagers written in the last 40 years. Most people like Tom Sawyer, the Hobbit, the jungle book by Kipling, books by Jules Verne, Dickens, etc.
Contemporary fantasy YA novels like Eragon have the same structure and little variance in their plots.
For me it's reading a long daydream of a typical teenager that is unhappy with his life and is living his power fantasy where he is free of the influence/control of his parents, gets strong, cool, gets new skills, new cool and strong friends, a hot virgin gf/bf. At the end they defeat the evil, save the world and become popular. It's a power fantasy and nothing more, like a fanfiction. But since it made a lot of money (see here >>16181985) even really bad novels have been published and marketed at children of which few have some kind of sense for quality.
Most are, probably due to the influence of LotR if at all only good at worldbuilding. The story is simple and reduced, since the authors are hacks. I cannot remember a fantasy YA novel where the parents of the protagonist were regularly dealing with their child and forming him. The authors seem to be uncapable of that, maybe because they cannot described complex relationships, maybe because they see their parents as some kind of oppressors that hinder them in the development to become strong, cool, skilled and popular. A non-parent is becoming the father/mentor figure. Usually they have the parents killed before the start of the story or if not then rather early. At least one is dead and the living one is rather like some kind of grandparent. The classics often suffer from that problem as well.
These novels are like sweets where the kids can eat a lot until it is bloated.
The readers imagine themselves to be the protagonist and read it to have a virtual power process. The protagonist solves a task, gets rewarded and so do the readers in their mind. These teach very little.They don't teach creativity, how to handle relationships, deal with the other sex, become a better person or becoming more adventurous. Not even warnings of what to look out for. All the good books I read had parts where the author wanted to share his wisdom with his readers, sometimes spoken clearly by a character or from the off. Sometimes just through the plot, showing what is happening.
The neverending story (the book of course, forget the movie) is a great deconstruction of the power fantasy in the YA novel.